


get back up.

by enjolrolo



Series: lucretia is my fucking wife [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Pre-Balance, Pre-Canon, Recovery, Social Anxiety, Stolen Century, Suicidal Ideation, Temporary Character Death, she's only 18 yall can we take a second
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2019-09-28 09:31:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17180414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enjolrolo/pseuds/enjolrolo
Summary: Being a member of the Starblaster crew comes with a bit of, uh, a learning curve. For someone like Lucretia, it's more like a learning zipline that she's holding onto with her bare hands. So, you know, a lot of fun all around.(The Light of Creation continues to be a pain in the ass. Magnus forgot his copy of "Must Love Dogs" on their home planet. Lucretia, against all odds, makes some friends.)





	1. 1-3

**CYCLE 1.**

 

It’s not that it’s ever been an issue with the crew of the Starblaster, per se. Like, they’ve never shouted at her or told her to get lost, but. Lucretia just isn’t sure if she belongs. 

School was a nightmare of her skirting the edges of social interaction and stuttering her way through presentations and getting pushed around a little by some of the rougher members of the rebound team, not to mention her violent refusal to take initiative in regards to making friends. 

She’d hoped that she could shed that image of herself in this voyage, that maybe she could be funny and smart and friendly enough that her new crewmates could maybe like her, maybe eventually become her friends, but so far, no such luck. After making a total fool of herself at the press conference (at first she’d thought it hadn’t been awful, in fact, she had glowed after she finished talking because she got through it without stuttering, but nobody had reached out to high-five her on her way back, she hadn’t even gotten a smile from anyone but Magnus--and Magnus smiles at everyone), she’d been too worried to speak up around the others for a while, not even to ask if they could leave the milk out after they finished with it so she could have a cereal snack.

And life on the Starblaster is fine. It’s weird as shit, sure, but fine. She sits at the table in the library, writes in her journals, and tries not to feel lonely (the IPRE hadn’t let her bring her dog on board to keep her company, and she misses her mom. Like, a lot). Around her, she sees the others making connections and starting to joke with and even prank each other. They hold back when it comes to her, she’s more of an observer and a dampener on the fun in the room she’s in, or even just her general vicinity when they’re out exploring. 

 

**CYCLE 2.**

 

It’s the second cycle by the time someone notices that she’s started skipping crew dinners, and it’s only because they’re all back together again and there’s an extra seat at the table. Davenport’s the one who confronts her about it, though that may or may not be a good thing. 

Lucretia sinks down in her seat as he basically commands her to get her shit together, and she sees Lup in the hallway, unabashedly watching and whispering to Taako next to her, probably saying something about how Lucretia has a stick so far up her ass she couldn’t sit at the dinner table if she tried. Taako cackles, and Lucretia’s face is hot as she agrees to whatever Davenport’s telling her to do better.

“We need to be united in whatever’s going on here,” Davenport says. Lucretia can’t argue, but she wishes Lup would stop watching her like that. “You can take a break for an hour.”

Lucretia comes to dinner that night and it’s awkward. Nobody says much directly to her past a greeting, except one time when Magnus gets her attention and her heart leaps because someone noticed that she was dying to get into the conversation they’re having--but then he just asks for her to pass the butter.

Afterwards, she clears her plate, thanks Taako for cooking, and books it out of there.

Dinner gets a little more bearable over the next week or so, but Lucretia always notices the uptick in lively conversation after she leaves the room, and it’s humiliating. She wants to speak up and join in, but her words get stuck in her throat because she knows they’re going to laugh at her. She hates this. 

On day nine of Lucretia attending dinner, someone deviates from the previously accepted procedure. Merle points at her and says, “You’re very mysterious, Lucretia. What do you put in those journals all day long?”

Every eye in the room is on her, and she freezes, staring back at Merle and hoping it isn’t a joke. After some of the worst silence she’s ever experienced, she clears her throat and says, “Uh. I usually just chronicle the events of the day. I sketch locals and wildlife and um. Plants, I guess. Just trying to keep record of everything important.”

“Is my dick size in there, then?” Magnus asks, and Taako snorts, but Merle elbows him sharply.

This is her chance to say something funny. Lucretia maybe pauses a moment too long because everyone’s eyes are on her, but then she gets out, “D-due to the fact I left my microscope at home, uh...It has to be visible to the naked eye to be included.”

It’s a bit of an exaggeration to say that chaos erupts, but it comes pretty close. Lup inhales some of her wine and doubles over coughing, and Taako thumps her on the back repeatedly while Barry shakes his head. Merle is hitting the table with his fist as he laughs, and Davenport has put his face in his hands. Magnus, on the other hand, is beaming despite the insult, as if something new and entirely exciting has just occurred. Lucretia says “sorry” to him, but he waves her off.

“Didn’t know you had it in you,” Magnus says. 

Lucretia doesn’t point out that he’s had a year and a half to get to know her and this is the closest thing to real conversation they’ve ever had. “Hah,” she says instead, feeling out of her depth but pleased nonetheless.

Dinner is better after that. Lucretia gets a few more opportunities to contribute per meal, she makes Lup laugh again (Lup’s awful obnoxious laugh is the best sound in the world, Lucretia is pretty sure), she thinks she may be doing okay in regards of getting along with the crew, at least enough that Davenport won’t yell at her again. 

Over the course of the time it takes for her to start to get comfortable, people start heading out on missions to learn more about the world they’re on. The dinner table dwindles until it’s just Lucretia and Davenport, the latter being there to manage the ship and the former there because she didn’t get invited to come and record anything (she had even gotten up the courage to ask Lup and Barry and Magnus if she could come with them to record their discoveries but, even after Magnus had nodded, Barry had said pretty clearly that he could handle writing things down for a couple of weeks, and Lucretia made a hasty retreat, promising herself to never try that again).

She’s back to being alone all day (Davenport isn’t big on one-on-one interaction either and both of them resort to eating by themselves again), and she wants it to be fine. She wants to be able to go back to not needing anyone else around. 

It isn’t working. Her chest hurts because she’s lonely and she hasn’t had any positive physical contact with another human person in almost two years (the last time she remembers anyone even  _ touching _ her was when Merle dragged her behind the bar to hide while Magnus fucked shit up the night before the ship took off). She’s pretty sure her love language is physical touch, and to put it nicely, she’s been feeling a little unloved.

In theory, the other six people on the Starblaster are at least borderline approachable and incredibly intelligent--not to mention big on hugs (Magnus hugs Taako  _ every morning,  _ even though Taako hates it, but can’t find time to look Lucretia’s way). But Lup and Taako are quick to make fun, Barry has better things to do than make small talk, Magnus is so overly friendly it seems forced. Merle is constantly saying things just this side of inappropriate about plants that make her more than a little uncomfortable, and Davenport’s her boss. They all seem to be getting closer to each other while Lucretia drifts further away.

The rest of the second cycle runs itself in a similar fashion to the first--Lucretia writes and explores by herself and watches the others come and go and she even moves out into the front common area to work in the hope that someone-- _ anyone _ \--will talk to her, and sometimes she gets some “hi’s” or “have you seen (insert crew member)?’s” but it doesn’t work out the way she wants it to. Lucretia knows she should take some action herself, but she’s paralyzed by the idea of further rejection, so she does nothing. 

She even considers cutting the cycle short to get away for a little while, but the idea of facing consequences at the beginning of the next cycle for an action that clearly wasn’t an accident seems too overwhelming for now. Suicide isn’t the answer for this problem (at this point).

They leave the world behind at the end of the cycle, taking the Light of Creation with them as the Hunger destroys the world, and Lucretia wants so badly to break the cycle and be left behind and be destroyed with the majority of the civilization of this planet. 

She doesn’t get off the ship, she finds herself in the same spot she was in at the beginning of the last cycle, and just watches as the others rush around her to help land the ship at the new planet they’ve stumbled onto.

  
  


**CYCLE 3.**

 

It’s a planet entirely covered with ice, constantly being buffeted by blizzards. The plates of ice shift almost hourly, creating new cracks and sealing up old ones, but there’s a constant glow of strange colors coming from below. As the ice moves, chasms of pure colored light open up, going down to who knows what depths and illuminating the snow falling above them. Lucretia is entranced by it. 

Barry is pretty jazzed about it as well, and is in the common area one afternoon with a few of the others talking about developing some kind of drill to get down in there, Lucretia hears as she goes to find a snack. He’s talking about possibly using light to help power some kind of technology for making the planet liveable. Davenport points out something about how it’s going to be hard to distinguish between any of these lights and the Light of Creation, and Lucretia sees her entrance to the conversation like a flashing neon sign--she has a book in her quarters about some research one of her professors did about creating light filters and categories and sensors and if she could just open her mouth she could take advantage of this opportunity--

“I,” she says, and all eyes in the room swivel to her and she almost gives up. Instead, Lucretia clears her throat and ignores how warm her face is as she continues. “I have a book about creating light sensors to differentiate the different types and--you could--could borrow it, if you’d like.”

“Is it the one by Linderman?” Barry asks, blinking at her. He smiles, a pitying look like he can’t believe she actually tried to talk to him. “I think I might have a copy of my own.”

Lucretia nods frantically, tries to avoid the stares of the others. “Oh, that’s fine! If you-- uh. Need mine let me know.” And she flees, taking her almonds and walking out of the room as quickly as possible.

After tearing herself apart for almost half an hour for making a dumb offer like that ( _of course Barry has a copy of the fucking book he probably had Linderman as a professor_ _too, they hate you and your stupid fucking stutter_ ), she decides to get some sort of observing done so that she can collect her own firsthand knowledge of the planet (and so she can distract herself from her rapidly spiraling mental state).

The Starblaster is parked on the largest plate of ice they could find--and judging by the muted light beneath, it’s the thickest as well. It hasn’t split in a long time, judging by how the fallen snow hasn’t been disturbed, but Davenport had mentioned moving the ship every few weeks to make sure they didn’t fall  _ into  _ the planet. Lucretia bundles up as much as she can, clips her tracker onto her jacket just in case, and steps out onto the surface as soon as the most recent earthquake has passed.

The world, now that she’s out on it, isn’t completely silent. There’s wind in her ears, but also a distant hum that sounds almost like music, oozing up from the ground beneath her and filling her with a weird sort of warmth, despite the freezing temperature that’s already making her fingers numb. Lucretia walks a short distance, listening to the music get almost imperceptibly louder, and breathes in through her scarf. 

She sits at the edge of the plate, where she can see the snow in an indent that must be one of the huge cracks crisscrossing the world, where the music is the loudest. And she waits, watching the storm in front of her.

Lucretia can’t tell how much time passes, but it must have been around an hour because suddenly, the ground beneath her rumbles, and she’s tossed to the right as the plate she’s sitting on jerks to the side. The fissure that opens up in front of her is full of multicolored light that dazzles her, and she hears loud music, it’s singing to her, it’s beckoning her to jump in and be safe and warm and  _ not alone _ \--

Someone has a hold of her arm and is pulling her backwards, sliding her across the ice towards them, onto her feet, and then wrapping an arm around her shoulders to secure her. Lucretia pushes at their hands to try and get back to where she’d been at the edge, but the rumbling is ceasing and the crack is closing up and it’s too late, it’s gone for at least another hour and she won’t get another chance to see it today, because someone in a standard-issue IPRE parka is shepherding her back towards the Starblaster.

It’s Magnus, she dimly realizes, and Magnus is much too strong for her to do anything about being pushed back up the stairs onto the deck, then down more stairs into the common area. As she stumbles over the threshold, she realizes she’s shaking so badly from cold that she can hardly stay on her feet. Merle pulls off her scarf and coat and throws a blanket over her shoulders and she finds herself on the couch next to Taako and Lup, who are watching her with twin blank stares.

Lucretia sneezes, wipes melting snow off of her eyelashes. Her skin is smarting from how warm the room is. Looking around, everyone in the crew is present, watching her with facial expressions that she doesn’t have the capacity to understand. 

“Um, thanks for the blanket, Merle.” She clenches her jaw to stop her teeth chattering, and is so focused on also ceasing her violent shivering that she almost doesn’t hear Merle’s grunt of acknowledgement. Bending down to take her boots off seems to be an impossible task at the moment, so she just sits there, hunched over and gathering her strength to make a break for her room to hide for the next three weeks.

“Do you want to explain yourself?” Magnus asks, sounding almost angry.

Lucretia doesn’t know what he means by that, has a vague feeling that whatever she says will be wrong and she’s going to get yelled at either way. She looks for a kind face and sees Merle giving her a reassuring smile. Focusing on him, she gets her words in order. “I was, I was exploring, just t-trying to get a feel for, you know, uh, the area. It’s my job.”

“Your job is to  _ write things down,  _ Lucretia, not to make foolhardy expeditions without telling anyone you’re leaving,” Davenport snaps, and Lucretia pulls her blanket around her shoulders a little tighter. 

“I wa-asn’t gone  _ that _ long,” she protests weakly, hating herself for every word that comes out of her mouth incorrectly. 

“You were out there for seventy-four minutes, J. Jonah Jameson,” Lup says. 

“Yeah, get a watch or something,” Taako adds. Both of the twins’ voices lack a certain edge that they usually have, but Lucretia figures it’s probably because they’re bored and don’t really have anything better to do than poke fun.

“Don’t let this happen again,” Davenport says.

“Sorry.” Lucretia sneezes again. She waits out a small silence, then pushes herself back up onto her feet and shuffles out of the room. Nobody stops her.

The next morning, she wakes up and she’s still shivering and there’s still humming in her ears. Her blanket is too hot, and she kicks it off of her. She’s sore, despite not doing any exercise the previous day, and her head hurts. Making a quick list of her symptoms tells her she probably has a fever, and all the coughing she keeps doing means her prolonged exposure to the cold yesterday probably gave her some kind of hypothermia, and the lack of treatment administered meant she was extremely susceptible to any number of viruses on the ship.

A little proud of her analysis, Lucretia decides she’s probably still healthy enough to take care of herself. The dizziness that makes her run into her doorframe eventually goes away, at least enough for her to get down the hallway and into the kitchen, so she figures she’s fine.

It’s not like anyone on board wants to take the time to take care of her anyway, after her dumb stunt the day before. She isn’t even worth one of Merle’s slots.

With that fun thought in her head, she very determinedly makes herself some tea, putting so much energy into the process that when Magnus accidentally bumps into her on his way into the kitchen and she spills it all down her front, she very nearly dissolves into tears.

She gets herself mostly under control, but her breathing still gets a little shaky, and Magnus apologizes over and over and over and picks up the mug and uses the mop in the corner to get most of the mess out of the way. Lucretia’s on her way to making another cup when Magnus stops her by asking, “Are you feeling okay?”

Lucretia hasn’t been asked that in a very long time, but she remembers the protocol. She takes a steadying breath, nods, smiles, and goes to the cupboard to get a new mug.

After this, the rest of the day is mostly uneventful, with her holed up in her room with her journals. Her handwriting only gets worse as the day goes on, and she keeps falling asleep and making her pens streak across the pages in weak lines as she drifts off, but she decides to worry about fixing it up tomorrow, when she’ll hopefully feel better.

Spoiler alert: she doesn’t feel better the next day, or the next two days, but at that point she’s done enough lying around already. She bundles up and heads out onto the deck where the rest of the crew is gathering in order to observe and have some sort of group discussion, wobbling on her feet and almost fainting twice on the way there, but shouldering through and making it there in one piece nonetheless. 

It’s colder today than it had been the last time she’d gone out. Lucretia feels like she’s sweating through her coat, but the wind that’s hitting her face is icy and sharp. Barry waves hi to her, and she waves back, walking up to join the group.

As soon as she gets outside, the low humming from the surface of the planet is back up to an audible level. It fills her ears and seems to be pulling her back out to the surface, promising her warmth and love and relief and a place to belong. Lucretia looks around at the rest of the crew to see if any of them seem to have noticed it, but it’s hard to focus on anything when the music is so sweet.

Lucretia finds herself in someone’s arms. There’s muted sound behind the music, like someone’s talking, someone’s shouting her name. She opens her eyes and sees that Lup is the one holding her, apparently having caught Lucretia after she passed out again. 

Lup helps Lucretia gain her footing, then lets go, though she hovers nearby, ready to catch Lucretia again if necessary. Lucretia tries not to think about how nice it felt to be held by someone. (Too late. She misses it already.)

It looks like Lup is talking, but the sound is slow to come into focus and Lucretia misses all of it. However, she does pick up “--if you get me sick I’m throwing you off this boat, Typhoid Marcia!” coming from the direction of Taako.

“I feel fine,” Lucretia says, wrapping her arms around herself. 

“Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?” someone who sounds like Magnus asks.

“I’m not  _ sick _ .” Lucretia doubles over in coughing, and the music surges in volume. She doesn’t  _ want _ to be weak in front of any of these people, they’ll never trust her to be on her own ever again and she can’t guilt them into constantly monitoring her when they didn’t care enough to notice she was out in the snow for an hour and a half in the first place--but she can only fight her body so much, and losing consciousness again is a bit of a relief.

She wakes up again in her bed feeling less dizzy, with Magnus sitting next to her and going through a huge book that appears to be about healing magic. The book is upside-down. Lucretia doesn’t point that out.

“Hi there,” he says when she sits up. 

Lucretia looks at the book in his hands for a few more moments, feeling stupid for even leaving her quarters earlier. She could have avoided this whole debacle entirely (she could have jumped into the fissure between the ice a week ago and avoided  _ everything  _ entirely). 

“Looks like you’re thinking some dark thoughts in there,” Magnus says. “Need to talk about something?”

Lucretia blinks at him. “What?” she asks, a little accusatory.

Magnus spreads his hands in a peaceful gesture. “I’m just here if you want to talk about anything.”

Looking at him, he doesn’t seem like he has any ulterior motives to getting into her head, but she doesn’t think she’s ready to trust him with any huge issues yet.

“Have you heard any music?” she asks instead. Which is a dumb question, and she rushes to explain herself in some way. “I mean, when I was out on the surface, I heard--I heard some kind of like, humming? It got louder when the ice opened, and it won’t g-get out of my head, on the deck it was so loud I couldn’t hear anything else--”

“Is it here right now?”

Lucretia nods. “It hasn’t gone away all week.”

Magnus looks thoughtful. “I noticed a kinda vibration out on the ice, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. I can check with the others, if you like.”

She shakes her head. “No, that’s fine, the-ey’ll just think I’m even more crazy.”

“We don’t think you’re crazy,” Magnus says, like a reflex. 

“Uh, okay,” Lucretia says.

“We don’t,” Magnus insists. “Is that why you didn’t ask for help?”

Lucretia shrugs, and Magnus seems to take that as answer enough.

 

From that exact moment on, Magnus becomes her ally. He sits with her most evenings (probably a ploy to keep her from working past eleven at night), and even helps her move out to the couch in the common area so she can have a change of scenery while she gets better (Merle hasn’t been able to get any healing magic to work on this planet, so she’s recovering the slow way). He’s not bad company at all; in fact, she finds he’s an extremely patient listener and they share a love of dogs that they can discuss for hours on end. He gives  _ her _ hugs now, the first one of which makes her cry, but he doesn’t seem to think that’s pathetic at all. Which, interesting.

The music fades back into a hum.

Further investigation yields that it comes back on bad days. On days when she hates her thoughts so much she avoids them by working on her journals into the early hours of the morning, on days when she stutters so much nobody can understand what she’s trying to say, on days when her hands shake and ruin her drawings, it comes back full-volume. Magnus knows better than to let her outside alone on these days, and Lucretia appreciates having someone in her corner so much that she almost considers reaching out to the others (before reminding herself that that’s a bad idea that’s only going to end with her being embarrassed in front of her coworkers).

They leave the ice planet with the Light of Creation, and Lucretia has one more friend than she did a year ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i actually started writing this BEFORE "try again" so i said today how about we fucking post this, bitch. so here it is. in all my 2017 writing style glory


	2. 4-6

**CYCLE 4.**

 

The fourth cycle features a planet with little to no resources and no sunlight. This one, Lucretia actually does end up cutting short (she stages an elaborate accident because she can’t deal with it anymore and she figures it’ll leave more food for the others). The others will thank her later, she’s sure. 

  
  


**CYCLE 5.**

 

When she comes back, the fifth year of the voyage, they haven’t really seemed to miss her at all and she doesn’t feel any better. Magnus gives her a big hug when he sees her, but she suspects he’d had too much on his mind to notice she was gone most of the time. After all, she doesn’t take up that much space and none of them know her well enough to truly mourn, especially because they knew she was coming back anyway. 

Lup and Barry had kept up her journals, basically showing that her purpose on this ship is nonexistent. Boy, was  _ that _ a punch to the jugular when she found out. 

This cycle brings them to an uninhabited desert planet. Lucretia’s so unready to talk to all of her crewmates again that she volunteers for the first scouting mission almost right off the bat.

The report she makes of her findings two days later is a little rough, because she killed herself two days ago, Lucretia-Time-wise, and Magnus isn’t there (her audience is actually just Lup and Barry and Taako, Taako appearing to be entirely disinterested in the entire affair), so her words are painful to wait for and she knows she’s just making herself look worse. Despite this, nobody makes any snide comments, apart from when Lup looks at her after she says “knife geysers” and says “Lucretia, honey, what in the whole shit is a ‘knife geyser’?”

Lucretia doesn’t know how to process being called “honey.” Her face is going to melt off of its bone scaffolding. “Uh, I d-do-on’t know. I ma-arked it on the map there, you can g-go find it.” 

“Uh, hi, do I look like someone who can read a map?” Lup whines. (Lup was the star of her extracurricular cartography course; Lucretia has that recorded somewhere.) “Taako, come with me?”

“I just sat down,” Taako says, not looking up from where he’s been painting his nails at the dining table for the last half hour. “Take Barry.”

“I think this sounds dangerous and you should take Magnus or someone,” Barry contributes.

“Nerd. Magnus is taking his nap right now and I’m  _ not  _ waiting.” Lup rolls her eyes. 

This could be an opportunity to finally be competent at something other than writing. Lucretia gently takes her painstakingly hand-drawn map back and offers, “I could show you.”

Raising one eyebrow, Lup asks, “You sure?”

Lucretia isn’t sure. Lup is extremely intimidating and arguably has the most power to get Lucretia ostracized from everyone else on board if things go badly. Lucretia takes a steadying breath and decides that if things go badly she could just  _ die  _ again, because that went fine last time. “Yeah, it’s only a short distance away.”

As they walk, Lucretia is hyper-aware of the fact that Lup is glancing at her periodically, and Lucretia doesn’t know whether she’s supposed to stare back or pretend not to notice it. It’s hot out, and Lucretia has tied her sweater around her waist, and Lup is complaining while pulling her stockings off in an attempt to try and remove as many layers as possible. 

They come to the edge of the big, flat area of sand, a sharp difference from the hilly, sand-duney appearance of the rest of the planet, and Lucretia can’t recall ever having this kind of one-on-one time with Lup before, despite having been on the same ship for over four years now. Does she need to be making a really good impression so they can maybe hang out again in the future? Now that she’s under pressure, Lucretia can’t think of a single thing to say.

“Tell me about yourself, Lucretia,” Lup finally says, seemingly in a last-ditch effort to not be sitting in the worst silence ever.

“What d-do you wa-ant me to t-tell you?” Lucretia tries not to wince but,  _ fuuuuuuck _ , she hates the way she talks, and Lup watching her struggle through her sentences isn’t helping. 

Lup snorts. “I don’t know. I thought I’d give you the option to have a moment about yourself because I’m a self-centered bitch.”

Which is a pretty easy lie to pick out--Lucretia’s observed Lup around people she cares about. For fucking years. “That’s not true.”

“ _ O- _ kay. Anyway, I think I should finally get to know you, because we could be stuck on this boat for a lot longer than four years.” When Lucretia still doesn’t offer up any personal information, Lup sighs. “Come on, work with me. What’s your favorite color?”

“Blue.”

“Huh.” Lup waits for a few more moments for Lucretia to talk more before sighing again, much more dramatically this time. “Lucretia, I’m making an effort here.”

Lucretia puts her face in her hands. “I’m no-ot good a-at talking.”

“I don’t mind.”

“You’re go-oing to regret saying that in about t-t-ten minutes.”

When Lup laughs, Lucretia almost forgets why she never made more of an effort to be around her. It’s more of a cackle, really, but it’s genuine and beautiful and Lucretia kind of wants to hear it again. “I’ll be the judge of that, don’t even worry about it, amigo.”

“Hmm,” Lucretia says, not sure she’s ready to be judged (or that she’s up to any sort of standard that Lup would hold her to).

The knife geysers choose a good moment to save her. Two and a half stories of huge metal blades erupt from different parts of the clearing at slightly offset times, lightning-fast, and then they stand there, reflecting the sun for a few minutes before sinking back down into the ground, almost in some sort of pattern.

Lup’s face is one of indescribable joy the whole time. “That was the  _ coolest shit  _ I’ve ever seen! This planet is a fucking Mario world, I’m deeply into this!” She springs back to her feet and pulls Lucretia up with her, though she quickly releases Lucretia’s hand (and Lucretia  _ misses _ it, for some reason. She really underestimated how much she enjoys positive physical contact). “We have to go and tell the others, Magnus is going to nut when he sees this!”

“Ew.”

Ignoring that, Lup waves for her to follow and takes off towards the ship. Lucretia keeps stumbling because she’s trying to look at the map and run at the same time, and eventually, Lup just snatches the map from her hands, folds it up, and shoves it into her pocket. “I remember the way. Come on!”

The run is much more enjoyable after that. They come to the last dune, a tall and steep one, and Lup begins to slide down it like a surfer. Lucretia tries the same and ends up falling, rolling down the hill and taking Lup out like a bowling pin. 

Lup shrieks with laughter, trying and failing to stop them both from rolling all the way down the hill, but there’s no traction in the sand. The two of them end up at the bottom in a heap, both of them spitting sand out of their faces.

Lucretia tries to catch her breath but she can’t stop giggling. She looks up at Lup, who’s landed on top of her, semi-pinning her to the ground, and finds Lup staring at her. 

“What?” Lucretia asks, suddenly aware of every point of contact she has with Lup at the moment. Lup’s knee is pressed against her thigh, and her hand, thrown out to catch herself, is brushing Lucretia’s ribs. It’s a compromising position, but neither of them move.

“I’ve never seen you laugh before, is all,” Lup says, and there’s a look in her eyes that Lucretia hasn’t seen before. Actually, that’s not true, she’s seen it when Lup looks at Barry sometimes, which is weird. Lucretia and Barry are very different people. Lucretia has an itemized  _ list  _ of reasons why people like Barry more than her.

“I don’t think I have in a very long time,” Lucretia admits. It’s certainly a tonal shift from two days prior, when she’d choreographed her own accidental tumble into the very hot propulsion system of the Starblaster.

“Happy looks good on you.” Lup moves then, pushing off the ground and standing, offering a hand to help Lucretia up when Lucretia proves too dazed to do so herself. “We should go before we get heatstroke.”

Right. The sun. Lucretia must be feeling so strange because she hasn’t had enough to drink, or something. The two of them walk the rest of the way to the ship and are greeted by Magnus, who hands them two huge glasses of ice water and gives Lucretia a big hug as a welcome back.

Lup drains hers and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Thanks, Mags. We just saw some sick knife geysers I think you’d like.”

Magnus’s eyes almost jump out of his head. “ _ Knife geysers _ ?”

Lup hands him Lucretia’s map. “Go crazy, homie.”

After Magnus has practically left a Magnus-shaped hole in the door on his way to retrieve someone to go with him, Lup sets her glass down and sprawls on the couch. Lucretia downs most of her glass, too, before getting up all her courage and saying, “Tha-at was fun, we should, we should hang out again sometime.”

Lup turns to her, her face looking a little sunburned, and grins. “Hell yeah, can’t believe it’s taken us years to do that.”

Considering that spending time with Lucretia can’t be  _ that _ much fun, it’s very kind of Lup to say that. Lucretia decides to quit while she’s ahead and scoots out of the room with one last nervous smile in Lup’s direction.

 

It’s a good year. Lup is fun to be around, and Magnus is a great friend and both of them make her come out of her room more to interact with others. It almost seems like they’re to a point where they would miss her if she ended the cycle early again, which is a strange feeling that’s taking some getting used to. Lucretia’s so close to  _ something _ , she doesn’t know quite what it is but it’s starting to happen--

 

**CYCLE 6.**

 

The next cycle comes. Lup and Magnus die halfway through the seventh month. 

Lucretia had tagged along with them and Taako, trying to figure out some of the odd cliff formations on one of the planet’s coasts, as something about them is integral to the civilization’s culture and religion, but then the noise they’re making proves to be too much. A boulder falls from the rocky expanse above them towards their small group, Lup not noticing until it was too late and Magnus throwing Taako and Lucretia out of the way before they could get hurt too. Lup and Magnus are crushed, the boulder crashing through the ledge they’d been standing on and sending their bodies down to the seemingly endless chasm below. 

Scrambling up from where he’d landed on his side, Taako  _ screams _ . He reaches for any kind of magic to help but none of his spells are enough to bring them back from the dead, he’s pulling on his ears so hard Lucretia’s worried they’ll tear off, he’s shouting about not thinking to bring a fucking cleric with them. 

Lucretia can only stare at the spot where her only two friends on this voyage had been standing moments before, frozen in place and completely useless. It’s only when Taako runs up to the edge that she comes back to herself, standing and reaching out and catching his sleeve on instinct, because she can’t see another person die today.  

Taako wrenches out of her grip, but he doesn’t fall like she was worried he would. “Don’t fucking touch me.” He pushes her backwards, and Lucretia rationalizes it (he’s upset, he has a  _ right to be upset _ , his twin sister just died, she can take this), but she what she doesn’t rationalize is her footing. She finds herself on the ground again, all of her words stuck in her throat as she stares up at him. 

He sends three magic missiles at her. Lucretia makes the mistake of throwing up a shield of faith to bounce them off, and Taako looks like he’s about to have an aneurysm.

“Do your spells only work when they protect  _ you _ ?” Taako demands, wiping running mascara off of his face. “Was there anything stopping you from casting back there that I don’t know about, or are you just a shitty wizard?”

Lucretia doesn’t answer. She’s frozen, her arms hugging herself like that’s going to provide any semblance of protection or comfort. Maybe she should drop her shield, maybe that would make the situation de-escalate, but then Taako would be able to get to her and she doesn’t want that.

“Answer me!” He gets right up in her face and bangs on the shield, probably further frustrated by her lack of response. He has every right to be livid, her lack of action had killed Lup and Magnus and how is she going to face any of her crew ever again--

“There was no-nothing we could’ve done,” Lucretia isn’t sure if this is true, but she doesn’t know how to calm Taako down, she’s hasn’t had a conversation with him in five years. “Taako, I’m sor-sorry, she’ll be back soon.”

Taako doesn’t answer that, he just turns on his heel and stalks off, leaving Lucretia sitting on the ground, alone. She drops her spell and gets to her feet. 

It’s a long walk to the Starblaster, and by the time she gets back, t’s pretty dark out. Barry’s in the common area when she finally stumbles in. 

“You good?” he asks, not getting up to check. Lucretia wishes she knew how to connect emotionally with another human being because she desperately needs a hug.

“Yeah, uh. Sorry.” Lucretia wipes at her face with the back of her hand and her wrist comes away wet, which means she’s crying again. Cool. That’s fine. Her fingers feel kind of numb and she’s having a hard time breathing but that’s fine. “Did you hear about…”

Barry nods.

“Did, uh, Taako already c-come through here?” Lucretia asks.

Barry nods again.

“Okay. Um, thanks.” And she leaves the room as quickly as she can.

In the hallway, she collides with Merle, who takes both one look at her and then her by the elbow. “Let’s go sit down,” he suggests casually. He’s leading her towards what she realizes is the dining area, the nearest place with comfortable seating, and Lucretia hears someone make a tiny high-pitched whining noise (is that her? Is that  _ her _ breathing that’s so loud?). She can’t face Taako right now.

“Okay, not the kitchen. Hang in there for just a second, Lucretia.” Merle changes directions and steers her towards his room, parking her on the bed and then closing the door behind them. His room is almost completely full of plants, and somewhere in her head she recognizes that air feels clean and nice in here. “Let’s breathe now. Okay?”

Lucretia stares, eyes wide, trying to listen to him. She still can’t really feel her hands, and her lungs won’t cooperate with her.

“Hey,” Merle says, no sign of joking in his eyes, but no hatred there, either. He’d make a good father. He’d make a good  _ friend _ , if Lucretia was someone tolerable enough to spend time around. “It’s time to breathe. Breathe in, kiddo.”

She tries a few times. As soon as she gets adequate air in her body again, she chokes and finds herself sharply aware of every sensation her body’s feeling as she coughs--her eyes hurt from crying and her chest aches and she doesn’t deserve to be here right now when Lup and Magnus aren’t and they’re all going to hate her forever there’s no coming back from this--

“Lucretia.” Merle takes her shaking hands in his strong ones. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

“They’re  _ dead _ ,” she gets out, pitching forward with the effort the words take. “They die-d-died be-cause of  _ me _ , Merle, why are you doing this?”

“It’s not your fault.” 

“It is!”

“Do you think you’re expected to throw yourself in the way of danger for others? I’m going to have a talk with Magnus about him being a self-sacrificing dingus when he gets back.”

Lucretia doesn’t understand why he isn’t angry at her, so she just sputters. 

Merle pats her hand, and though his tone is flippant, she gets the feeling he cares about what he’s saying. “Keep breathing. This’ll all work out a lot better than ya think it will. You’re all drama queens, Taako especially.”

“You’re one to-o talk, you went on a hunger str-ike until D-Davenport admitted you won at C-Catan,” Lucretia says, because Merle appreciates humor, right? That’s something that’ll get him to like her? That’s something that might keep him from turning on her after he figures out how selfish and awkward and bad she is? 

Merle barks out a laugh, which counts as a success. “Uh-huh. Well. It worked.”

Lucretia shakes her head, sufficiently distracted from her panic (even though the guilt in her stomach isn’t gone, she feels better for the time being), and takes one of those shuddery full breaths that means that her need to cry has been satisfied. 

There’s silence, and then Lucretia says, “Okay, sorry--sorry to bother you, I should go now.”

“You would know if you were bothering me, kid.” Merle gives her a very gruff half-smile, and Lucretia returns the favor before retreating from the room, sufficiently drained of energy.

 

She goes to bed feeling better, but in the days following she alternates between being scared to leave her room in the event of an ambush from Taako and being so drained she doesn’t even get out of bed to get to her journals. 

After a week of this, Lucretia is hungry and she’s run out of water in her quarters so she waits until the middle of the night to sneak out and retrieve enough supplies for a week or so. She’s closing the fridge after scrounging for some kind of snack when she hears Taako’s voice behind her.

“Those are my leftovers.”

Lucretia turns around and offers the container up, trying so hard to keep her composure that she doesn’t even try to argue. She can play this smart, she can get through this, she can be a diplomat. “Sorry. Here.”

Taako uses Mage Hand to snatch the container, but doesn’t take his eyes off her. He looks like shit; he obviously hasn’t been sleeping and his complexion is edging on grey. His hands aren’t steady on the box of food, but Lucretia isn’t sure whether it’s exhaustion or anger or both.

Lucretia takes the bottle of water she’d retrieved and holds it to her chest, gesturing vaguely with her free hand towards the door, behind Taako. “Well, s-see you in the mo-orning.”

When she tries to move past him, however, he just steps into her way. Lucretia understands that he needs some way to deal with seeing his twin sister die, but Lucretia doesn’t want to get beat up in this kitchen, at three in the morning, alone. She’ll admit that it doesn’t really seem like Taako’s style, but. She got pushed around by all sorts of kids at school. 

“Excuse me,” she says, keeping her eyes on middle distance and her grip on the water bottle. It’ll be over soon.

And then Taako sniffles, and Lucretia’s head snaps to look at him, she’s so surprised.

Taako’s also staring at nothing, his once-proud posture now hunched. “They’ll be back soon,” he says, but it sounds almost like a question, like he needs to hear someone say it. 

“Yes,” she says, not having anything else to do to reassure him. Taako doesn’t even let Magnus hug him sometimes.

Taako nods, rubbing one eye with his hand and then swearing loudly when he pulls his hand away and his eye makeup is smudged on it. “Okay. We got this.”

Lucretia nods too, trying not to let relief show on her face. 

“You thought I was gonna kick your ass,” Taako accuses.

Lucretia laughs nervously, more of a sharp exhale than anything, but she doesn’t deny it. 

“Here’s the thing. So. Uh. It wasn’t actually your fault,” Taako says, sounding like admitting he was wrong physically pains him. “I was just pissed off because Lup promised not to die this time around.” 

“Yeah, it sucks.”

Taako laughs, such a loud noise that it startles her. “Yeah, it sucks ass. Wish it was me and not her, yanno? She actually contributes something.”

“So do you, Taako.” She wishes she could tell him how he lights up a room when he wants to and how everyone in the crew wants to be around him and how his cooking makes dinner worth it even when nobody talks to her. If  _ he _ doesn’t contribute something, what is Lucretia worth?

He shrugs, looking miles calmer than he did when he first entered the room. He hands the container of leftovers back to her and offers a crooked smile. “See you around, Lucretia.”

Lucretia watches him leave, slightly unsure of how that worked out peacefully, but not about to complain about it.

 

The remaining five months of the cycle aren’t fantastic, but Lucretia doesn’t duck out of it, either. Merle seems to be going out of his way to check in with her every other day at least, and Taako has elected her to test out baked goods in Magnus’s absence (she suspects this is a chef’s ploy to make sure Lucretia is eating, as she has a tendency towards forgetting to do that, but she can’t tell if Taako’s the type to even notice that kind of thing. Merle probably put him up to it.). 

When they finally leave that world (sans Light of Creation--Merle’s attempts at diplomacy had fallen on deaf ears; in fact, they had made a hasty retreat after receiving a declaration of war on their ship) and Lucretia sees Magnus and Lup re-materialize, she almost starts crying. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy 20-bi teen yall!! i'm excited abt this fic!! 
> 
> also can you actually believe that they did 99 cycles like fuckkkkkkk


	3. 7-16

**CYCLE 7.**

 

Magnus gives her one of the hugs that she’s missed so much, and Lup finds time to ruffle her hair in between the many hugs she’s giving Taako (who’s ecstatic but trying not to show it).

“Aw, you missed us, Lucretia,” Lup says, eventually noticing the tears in her eyes.

“No shit,” Lucretia says, and Lup is so surprised by her swearing that she makes an undignified squawking noise.

That cycle is good. That cycle is Lucretia going to her first movie night with Lup and Magnus and Taako. That cycle is Lucretia learning how not to burn soup and serving a meal at dinner that everyone eats, even if it’s not amazing. That cycle is when she and Taako actually start having conversations like regular people.

 

**CYCLE 8.**

 

This one is the depressing mushroom world. There’s plenty to write about, and Lucretia actually gets  _ really  _ into drawing mushrooms.

She has pages and pages of diagrams--they’re bioluminescent and gorgeous and even though they’re super duper deadly there’s something about them that she’s drawn to. All of them are unique, and the patterns they make on the planet’s surface are mesmerizing.

“Did you ever do shrooms in high school?” Barry asks her one evening at the dinner table, apopro of nothing. It’s just the two of them--everyone else is planetside, meeting the locals.

Lucretia says, “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“Yeah, uh--no, I really didn’t do shrooms in high school,” Lucretia says. She fidgets. “Did you?”

“Hell yeah, I was a super cool kid.”

“Are you perhaps on shrooms right now?” Lucretia asks.

Barry shoots finger guns at her. “See, these things are only dangerous if  _ inhaled _ , right? So I dried one and just gave her a little try.”

“So you’re high off your ass right now,” Lucretia says. She’s teetering on a fine line between being amused and being apprehensive that he’s about to die.

Barry grins, clearly living his best life. “Yeah, well I figured it’s better than just drawing them all the time, like a doofus.”

She looks down at her diagrams, feeling vaguely self-conscious about them now. 

Her enthusiasm is further dampened as the mushrooms kill her friends off. This voyage won’t let her have one fucking thing.

  
  


**CYCLE 9.**

 

The situation this cycle is another high-stress environment, and Lucretia’s mental health quickly deteriorates and she ends her time on that planet early again. It’s a dangerous enough place that it’s very easy for her to get away with this again--she figures she’s earned it anyway, with watching the grisly deaths of her friends last year. It’ll make it easier for everyone else if she isn’t underfoot.

 

**CYCLE 10.**

 

Nobody seems particularly suspicious about how she died last year, which she counts as a success.

This cycle, she watches a magical tuberculosis-like illness slowly kill off four out of seven of her crewmates, which is a fun welcome-back-to-being-alive present. It reminds her that killing herself is one of the most temporary solutions to any problem she has, which goes against everything her therapist told her on her home planet.

 

**CYCLE 11.**

 

Not a notable cycle in the slightest. 

(Lucretia’s just glad she doesn’t have to watch Merle, Barry, Davenport, and Taako crumble into literal ash in front of her again this year.)

 

**CYCLE 12.**

  
Thankfully, number twelve is a bit more notable--Lup and Magnus enter a high-speed car chase to try and win back the Light of Creation, but lose the race to some freakish monstrosity of a creature that has fused its soul to its vehicle in order to maximize speed. 

“I am speed!” the creature howls from its victory podium, while Magnus and Lup fume from second and third place. Lucretia’s almost  _ glad  _ the Hunger gets this planet.

 

**CYCLE 13.**

 

They land on another uninhabited planet--this one so massive that it takes them all twelve months to find the fucking Light. Between all the constant searching, they hardly see each other, and it’s depressing how easy it is for Lucretia to return to old self-sufficient habits. 

They find the light with a few days to spare, and the last few days are spent recuperating from all the constant labor, and it’s the first time in a couple years that she feels lonely again.

 

**CYCLE 14.**

 

Cycle fourteen turns into a bona-fide Plain Ol’ Science Year, but it’s not as stagnant as the others. The world they’re on is cold and damp and, as far as any of them can tell, literally designed to suck energy from anyone who walks on the surface. Lucretia helps discover this, as she and Magnus are the ones who go out to explore (the old guys are playing chess and Taako and Lup want to catch up and Barry is seemingly magnetically drawn to being wherever Lup is). 

They get about five minutes into their expedition when Lucretia sees that Magnus’s face is becoming increasingly ashen and notes that her head is getting more and more fuzzy the more she walks. 

“Let’s turn around,” she finally says, tapping on Magnus’s arm.

“Yeah, I’m not feeling so hot.” Magnus puts a hand on her shoulder to steady himself, and his hand is cold. “This place is a major bummer, maybe the weather will get better another day.”

As far as they can tell, the weather doesn’t change day-to-day. Neither does there even seem to be a time of day, ever, as it doesn’t ever get lighter than semi-darkness. The Light of Creation isn’t the hardest thing in the world to spot, as it’s the polar opposite of everything else there, but then they’re stuck with nothing else to do.

Inspired by two weeks of complete boredom, Barry decides he wants to run some tests.

“Uh-uh. No fucking way, Barold,” Lup says. She and Taako have both refused to get off the ship, saying that having energy drained from their life forces was bad for their pores.

“It’d be safe, we’d have a safety rope situation, full communication, everything,” Barry insists. “I just want to see how it affects different people, and if anything can lessen effects, that sort of thing.”

Lup still looks hesitant, and Davenport is still shaking his head. “I’m not huge on jeopardizing crew safety on purpose.”

“It’s spooky in a major way out there,” Taako contributes. “I’m scared of the dark, homie.”

Merle nods at that. “Not a fan of sitting out there by myself.”

“You’d have a radio, and we can observe you from the deck! You wouldn’t be by yourself.”

Magnus grimaces. “I don’t know, dude. Being out there sucks and I don’t want to do it again if I can help it.”

“For  _ science _ ,” Barry pleads, like a fucking nerd. He looks right at Lucretia, who up until now has been quiet, and she shrinks from having everyone’s gaze turned to her. “What do you think?”

“Um,” she says, her heart rate picking up. “I think it’d be fine.”

The general eruption of  _ what! _ ’s that erupt around her almost make her regret speaking, but Barry’s beaming at her and nodding emphatically. “Hell yes.”

“It’s against regulation,” Davenport maintains.

Lucretia finds it in her to speak up again, emboldened by the fact that she’s finally made a connection with Barry. “I mean, uh. It’d--it’d be okay for just a little while, r-right? We’ll b-be back in a year if anything happens, anyway.”

“A fair point,” Magnus says. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be seen as less courageous than Lucretia, who’s unarguably the least brave person on the boat. “It’s worth a shot.”

The others are still hesitant, but most of them come around after Lucretia voices her opinion, which is strange. Taako still opts out, but that’s fine because Lup decides she’s in and Barry reasons he only needs one of the twins to make the data work anyway. Lucretia is a little proud that her voice actually meant something, and Barry won’t stop grinning at her.

The experiment turns out fine, because apparently just having a good snack brings energy levels right back up from where the planet leached them, and Barry gets all the data he needs without harming any of the subjects permanently.

 

**CYCLE 15.**

 

This year, they’re on another planet that has some sort of atmospheric sensory deprivation qualities--which means Barry’s back at it again, and he wants to do full psych evals on every crewmate. 

He has a good point when he says that it’s been fifteen years since any of them checked in on how everyone else is doing, but Lucretia must look extremely distressed when it’s brought up, because Lup pulls her aside after breakfast and asks, “Do you have something you don’t want to tell us about?”

“What?” Lucretia bluffs. She must roll a critical failure on that one, because Lup isn’t fooled for a second.

Lucretia gives up on the ruse and wrings her hands together, glances over Lup’s shoulder back into the room. “I just--he’s not a doctor, he doesn’t give a shit about HIPAA, he’s gonna tell everyone  _ everything _ \--”

“If I make him sign a full confidentiality thing, would that help, or…”

“I d-don’t want him to know anything about me! He’s gonna, he’s gonna--”

Lup reaches out and puts her hands on Lucretia’s shoulders, rubs her upper arms, trying to calm her down. “Breathe, babe. You got this. He’s not allowed to tell anyone what anyone says, and if he does I’ll murder him for three cycles in a row, okay?”

“You don’t have to kill him.” Lucretia always feels better when Lup’s touching her, but she doesn’t know how to interpret that, so she doesn’t bring it up. That’s not really a fun, casual conversation topic for between friends. “I just, uh…”

“You don’t usually tell anybody shit about yourself,” Lup finishes for her.

Lucretia shrugs, bashful. Lup’s not wrong. “Promise he won’t tell anything?”

“Pinky promise.” Lup says, and smiles at her. 

Lup’s promise (Lup’s smile, more like) is the only thing that gets her into the study the next day. She sits across from Barry, who looks like he’s trying too hard to look like a therapist.

“I know this seems a little ridiculous, but someone’s gotta check up on all of us, right?” Barry looks at a paper containing what looks like a list of questions. “None of your answers will be disclosed to anyone on board, so please be honest with me.”

It’s a lot easier than Lucretia expected, the questions are mainly yes or no, and she’s been doing better this cycle about taking care of herself so she doesn’t seem too bad off. Barry’s really polite, but he’s learning more about her in this session than in ten years of living on the same ship, which says a lot about both of them. 

When Barry opens the questions up to history of mental health, however, it starts to get not great. Lucretia says a lot more  _ yes _ ’s and her hands start shaking. Barry, not trained in psychiatry, has no poker face whatsoever and she hates that he looks  _ worried  _ about her.

He asks about if she’s had thoughts about killing herself, and Lucretia nods jerkily, watches him write something down.

Barry’s voice is lower, a lot more careful as he asks, “Have you ever attempted suicide?”

“Yeah.” She’s so anxious to be finished she slips up on her careful yes or no pattern, she keeps rambling, like an idiot. “Yeah, I’ve done it before.”

He looks up at her, and his hand stops mid-word, a drop of ink pooling on the paper and making Lucretia inordinately antsy. 

Lucretia looks at the floor, then at the exit, then out the window, before electing to backpedal as hard as she possibly can. “I mean, ugh--No. I misspoke. Am I finished?”

“No, not yet. When?” Barry slowly puts his notepad down. He’s worried about her, Lucretia fucked up she fucked up he’s never going to let her go anywhere by herself ever again-- 

She winces when he leans towards her. He stops trying to get closer.

“Lucretia. When did you try to kill yourself.”

It would be easier to just tell him. He’s not allowed to tell anyone else, under threat of multiple-death. Lucretia takes a deep breath, not looking up at him but not making a run for the door, either. “Just, uh. I did it. Cycle four and cycle nine, I think? I have it written down somewhere, haha.”

“You did it? As in, you followed through?” Barry demands, his voice rising as he gets more agitated. “During  _ this trip _ ?”

“Uh. No?” Lucretia isn’t sure what the correct answer is. Prepared to use that as an excuse, she’s surprised when she feels Barry take her hand. She startles, but he doesn’t let go.

“Why didn’t we know?” he asks, once her hands have stopped trembling.

She shakes her head. “I was--I was really careful. It was better for everyone.”

This seems to freak him out further, and he scrunches his face up at her. “ _ No _ , I don’t think that’s true.”

“You all di-dn’t seem to miss me that much,” Lucretia says, lashing out, momentarily forgetting that pissing Barry off could mean being exposed to everyone onboard. “It didn’t matter, in the long run. It’s fine.”

He sets his pen down on the desk and takes her other hand, pulling it away from where she’s wrapping it around herself protectively. “Lucretia, what the hell. That’s not--”

She snatches both of her hands back, suddenly upset at  _ him  _ instead of at herself. “Yeah, fuck off, Bluejeans. None of you would  _ fucking  _ talk to me except for Magnus, and you and Lup kept up my journals, so it’s not like you needed me here.”

“You’re part of our crew--”

“Everyone else needed the supplies and space and I wasn’t needed.” Lucretia jabs an accusatory finger in Barry’s direction. “You don’t get to tell me you would have  _ cared  _ if I had decided to tell you I was going to kill myself.”

“Twice,” Barry emphasizes, missing the point entirely.

“Yeah.”

“Trust goes both ways,” Barry tells her, annoyingly undistracted by her tirade. It’s the most sentences she’s probably strung together in months, and it had felt sort of nice to get it off her chest. “But I’m sorry we weren’t there for you.”

The two of them sit in quiet for a moment, until Lucretia sits back in her seat, and crosses her arms over her chest. “Are we done?”

“I think your friends deserve to know about this, so we can keep you safe in the future.”

Lucretia doesn’t know how she feels about being kept safe by other people, but there’s another issue she has with that sentence. “Are  _ we _ friends?”

Barry blinks. He seems to have forgotten that Lucretia was telling him to fuck off thirty seconds ago, because he says, “Uh. I consider us friends, yeah. I like having you around.”

She doesn’t think being friends with someone is supposed to feel this lonely, but maybe she’s set too high a standard for friendship. Maybe she’s been friends with the whole crew all along and she just hasn’t noticed. Maybe that’s why Barry is being so grossly  _ understanding  _ about Lucretia getting upset with him. “Okay.”

“So will you tell someone? Just so you’re not all by yourself.” 

She has nothing to lose. She agrees, just so that this session will be over with already.

 

Magnus and Lup are for sure her friends, if anyone is, and they’re the ones she hangs out with the most--seems like as best a place to start as any. She pulls them aside and sits them down and they watch her as she digs her fingernails into her arm and breathes carefully to get up the courage. 

“Barry said I should tell you something,” she finally gets out.

“Barold did?” Lup raises an eyebrow. 

Magnus’s voice is quiet, his head tilted, sensing that this is a big deal. “Do you need to tell us for safety reasons?”

Lucretia nods. Her ears are ringing. “You know how I died on cycle four and then on cycle nine?” She waits for them to nod, and then she sees Magnus’s eyes start to widen, so she grinds out, “ _ I  _ did that.”

The news isn’t taken as lightly as she’d hoped it would be.

“ _ Twice _ ?” Lup asks, horrified and shocked. Magnus’s eyes are welling up, and Lucretia’s ready to run for safety, but she doesn’t move.

“I don’t know why Barry told me to tell you, it’s been like six y-y-years si-ince--” Lucretia takes another moment to breathe, grounding herself. “Please don’t be mad,” she finishes, and can’t find it in herself to raise her eyes above ankle level. Lup is wearing some really cute socks.

Both of them go in for the hug at the same time, and Lucretia restrains herself from squeaking in surprise. “Why in the whole shit would we be mad, babe?” Lup asks, and Magnus says, “Yeah, we’re just worried about you.” 

Lucretia buries her face in Lup’s shoulder and feels Magnus’s hand on her back and she feels safe. Maybe Barry hadn’t been completely wrong about the  _ friends _ thing.

  
  


**CYCLE 16.**

 

After she decides to trust, things get markedly better, which is both a surprise and a relief. Lup and Merle start helping her with her journals sometimes, so she gets more time to hang out with them (and so she’s not as overwhelmed all the time). She starts going to breakfasts as well as dinners, she even starts talking to Davenport more. She doesn’t feel as alone, she feels like she has friends here now. Even her stutter is improving, as she’s not as afraid to talk around these people anymore. It’s not a direct upwards line, but the good days are beginning to outnumber the bad ones.

She’s pretty sure that Lup and Magnus told the others about her, because all of a sudden, people are jumping to accompany her everywhere. It’ll be harder to sneak anything past them in the future, but for now--it’s nice.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love friendship


	4. 17-20

**CYCLE 17.**

 Merle asking her to record robot bedtime stories slowly makes Lucretia even _more_ sure that people are only doing things with her so that she won’t kill herself. Still, the stories are far too interesting for her to actually be upset about that, and she’s glad Merle asked.

They’re walking back to the ship after a day of talking to robots, the sky getting darker by the second, and Merle says, “For somebody who doesn’t talk that much, you have a lot of really good leadership instincts.”

Lucretia glances at him, nonplussed, but goes back to focusing on not tripping on various mechanical scraps. “I don’t--I don’t know about that. I’m--uh. Keen to just sit back and record. Thanks.”

“That might not always be enough,” Merle tells her. Which, ominous as hell, but okay.

Lucretia squints at him, and doesn’t answer for a while. “I think I’ll stick to my journals,” she eventually tells Merle, as they board the ship. She doesn’t think she could ever pull off a leadership role in any capacity, and the mere idea of trying to lead _anyone_ is giving her some massive anxiety. Merle, to his credit, gives up on this idea pretty quickly.

  


**CYCLE 18.**

The younger crew members go on an exploration mission, but leave Lucretia with Davenport and Merle. Magnus says it’s because someone on the ship has to be able to reach the top shelves in the kitchen, which Merle kicks him for, but that doesn’t really make Lucretia feel any better. She knows it’s because Magnus, Barry, and the twins were hanging out and came up with this idea without even thinking of Lucretia until it was too late.

“I’m going next time,” Lucretia insists.

Lup places a hand to the side of Lucretia’s face, cupping her cheek. “Of course, sweetheart.”

While Lup touching her face like that makes Lucretia a little light-headed, it still feels like they just didn’t want her around--does Lup think she’s some kind of toddler that will be placated by that weak promise? She supposes sending five out of seven people on a trip is overkill, and Lucretia’s probably kind of depressing to be around, but she’s a little stir-crazy just watching the ship. Davenport and Merle have some weird tension between them that Lucretia isn’t even going to _try_ to delve into, and--well, long story short: by the first month mark, Lucretia’s fucking bored.

She resorts to pulling all of Merle and Lup’s books about magic off of their shelves and going through all of them in the study, trying to teach herself some evocation and healing spells. It’s not exactly hard to set things on fire and then fix them again, and Lucretia gets tired of that too.

This frustration culminates one particular afternoon--day fifty-three, to be exact. She’s in a sour mood, which isn’t the best mood for a beginner in evocation magic, and she’s sort of in one of her mental health spirals at the moment.

Lucretia’s put _so much fucking time_ into worrying about whether her crew actually likes her, and she’d _thought_ she was making progress with them--but here she is, eighteen years in and still the same pathetic, stammering person she was onstage at the IPRE press conference.

She flings a Fireball at her target--a weird straw mannequin that Magnus picked up one cycle--but she misjudges how big the Fireball is going to be in her current mood. The flame is a few feet across, and slams into the mannequin, going through it instantly. The fire catches the drapes, and spreads quickly.

Soon, the entire far wall and ceiling of the study are on fire. Lucretia shouts and scrambles to her feet and frantically throws water-casting spells around until everything is extinguished. The study is a hot, steaming mess, and Lucretia flops to the ground, exhausted.

The fire has been dealt with by the time that there are footsteps in the hallway and Merle and Davenport appear. She hears them hesitate in the doorway, and then both of them wander over and sit next to her on the ground.

“So what’d that wall do to you?” Merle asks.

Lucretia has her arm thrown over her face, her eyes hidden by the crook of her elbow. She only grunts at him, too annoyed to respond to that light-hearted question.

“This must be what teenage angst is,” Davenport says. “I’ve only read about it in books.”

“Look at you two. A couple of real funny guys.” Lucretia wipes her free hand on the carpet, as the damp remnants of her last water spell are starting to scratch at her nerves.

“We’re here all week,” Davenport says, jovial as hell.

That’s exactly the problem. Lucretia shuts her eyes against the dim light of the study as she moves her elbow away from her eyes to scrub her other hand against the carpet. The drippy, stupid feeling of water droplets is really getting to her right now, for some reason.

The three of them sit quietly for another few moments, and then Davenport, second only to Lucretia in bailing on social situations, offers, “Well, if everything’s okay in here, we can leave.”

There’s a muffled _thwack_ like Merle has swatted Davenport’s shoulder, and then Davenport amends, “Unless there’s...something you want to talk about? I suppose?”

Lucretia grunts at them again, and opens her eyes to squint at them. Davenport looks a bit uncomfortable, but other then that, the two old guys both look faintly concerned about her.

“Sorry I torched this room,” she says.

“We needed a new color scheme in here anyway,” Davenport says, waving a flippant hand.

“You sure you’re alright, honey?” Merle asks.

Lucretia flashes them a thumbs-up.

She gets two in return. Davenport and Merle get up and leave her alone, still lying on the ground in a small puddle with a thick haze of smoke still clearing out of the room.

 

**CYCLE 19.**

Lucretia dies, day _two_ , and it’s not even her choice this time. In the midst of a dragon attack, she’s knocked off the deck of the Starblaster from a height of ten thousand feet and that’s it for her.

 

**CYCLE 20.**

She rematerializes, and is swept up in a hug from Magnus. Taako and Lup aren’t far behind, and Merle pats her hip in greeting--the highest he can reach.

“Was that one on purpose?” Magnus asks her, in a low tone for only her to hear.

Lucretia shakes her head. It’s a fair enough question, but it kind of kills her mood--it’s been more than a decade since she last killed herself and nobody seems to accept that she’s doing better. “No, that fucking _dragon_ got me. Was I the only one that time?”

“Yeah, the rest of us kind of chilled out all year,” Magnus says, though his statement is contradicted by the fact that the crew looks exhausted (despite their newly reformed bodies). Lucretia doubts it was an easy year, but she doesn’t press for details. She can read about it later, she’s sure. Nothing like reading a year’s worth of exploits she missed out on to make her feel loved.

She starts to head towards the other end of the deck to help Davenport prepare the ship’s defense, but Merle grabs her arm and stops her. “We missed you,” he says, beaming up at her like she actually matters.

“Cringey,” Lucretia tells him.

Merle barks a laugh at her, letting the moment pass. “You’ve been hanging out with Taako, shithead.”

Then they separate to go take care of real important matters, because they have, in fact, happened upon another lava planet, and something’s shooting fireballs at their ship. Lucretia’s heart still feels light--and not just because it isn’t _her_ fault the ship’s on fire, this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is a bit short because the new semester is KICKING my ass but i hope u like it make sure to SMASH that like, comment and subscribe ring that lil bell if you want notifications when i post. see yall next time you horny boys


	5. 21-23

**CYCLE 21.**

While this cycle, on a beautiful, calm beach world, is the most relaxing place they’ve been to so far, it takes all of them a while to unwind (even by the end of the first month, Lup is rather twitchy and Davenport is up at odd hours to keep watch and Barry is compulsively checking various parts of the ship to make sure they’re in working order).

Despite the fact that Lucretia had lugged the Light of Creation onboard, week two, they’ve all forgotten how to relax. There’s a tense energy in the boat, as they all try and remember old hobbies that they’ve neglected for several years.

Surprising no one, it’s Merle that takes a running leap at chilling the fuck out. He returns from the beach with hideous gifts, which he forces upon all of them, and Lucretia stares at her Mikkee Maus head made out of sand dollars and tries her hardest not to break down into laughter.

Watching everybody destroy Merle’s minimal-effort gifts is what the crew needed, it seems. By the next week, they’re all living the beach life, and it’s glorious.

Lucretia picks painting up again. There are a few canvases tucked into a dusty corner of her closet, which her mother had pressured her into bringing in case she “got some extra time.” She’d honestly forgotten about them, but finding the canvases was a bittersweet sort of surprise. Perhaps the canvases would have been a more productive outlet for her emotions than planning her own suicides. Her mother had been a wise woman.

Over the course of the remaining months, Lucretia spends several hours a day painting. It’s slow work, because she wants it to be _perfect_ , and she often emerges for dinner rather exhausted. Somewhere around the seventh month, Lup grabs Lucretia’s arm as Lucretia makes to head to her room and work on the painting, and says, “Babe, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re _really_ bad at taking a vacation.”

Lucretia, a bugbear in the headlights, says, “Uh.”

“Let’s go swimming today,” Lup cajoles. “You need a _break_ , honey.”

Lucretia’s face is practically radiating heat. For some reason, Lup using pet names with her is still completely overwhelming. “Okay, I--yeah, okay, sure. Just us?”

“Gals’ day out,” Lup says. She pushes Lucretia towards her room with a hand on her lower back, and all of a sudden Lucretia’s kind of lightheaded (what is her fucking _deal_ today? Is she anemic?). “Get changed, I’ll meet you planetside.”

 

This was a bad idea, Lucretia decides, but she can’t put her finger on _why_. She and Lup walk a little while to find a cove with smaller waves and some shade trees, and the whole way there, Lucretia can’t put a name to the thrumming anxiety under her skin. It’s not because Lucretia had risked wearing a crop top today--it’s too hot to wear more fabric than that, and Lup doesn’t care either way. It’s not because Lucretia’s missing out on prime painting time--the painting’s coming along very well, and Lup was right when she’d said Lucretia could afford a day off. The stress isn’t even coming from the prospect of swimming, as Barry’s the only one in the crew that isn’t proficient in that field.

It would remain a mystery, because they reach the cove and set out a few blankets, and then Lup is running full speed into the water, sufficiently distracting Lucretia as Lup splashes water in her direction and calls, “Come on, Lucy!”

Lucretia puts her bag down and kicks her sandals off, and then runs after Lup.

It’s a perfect day for swimming, Lup had been correct in that assessment. The two of them splash around and collect seaweed for an offensive seaweed statue of Merle that Lup’s making and try their hand at sandcastles. By the time the sun is starting to set and the two of them are lying on the picnic blanket and completely exhausted, Lucretia’s content. She’s still somewhat damp from the ocean and there’s sand in her hair that’s never coming out, but she’s happy.

She rolls onto her side to face Lup. “Thanks for, for dragging me out of my room,” she says. “I appreciate it.”

Lup mirrors her, rolling over and maybe ending up a little closer than Lucretia is strictly okay with--she’s up in Lucretia’s business and Lucretia is-- _trying not to think about that_. “Of course,” Lup says, her voice a little lower than normal, probably because she’s tired. “Do you think Merle will recognize his likeness?”

Lucretia looks over Lup’s shoulder, towards the stinking pile of seaweed that’s supposed to represent Merle. “It’s like he’s here with us,” she says. Lup snickers and vaguely reaches out to push Lucretia away, but she pulls that punch a little too much before giving up entirely, just resting her hand on Lucretia’s waist.

Lucretia’s so out of her depth. Lup’s hand is touching her skin, and Lucretia can feel Lup’s breath on her face, and Lup looks like she’s staring at Lucretia’s lips, and then

“MAGNUS!” Magnus shouts from behind them, and Lup shouts, and Lucretia flinches and bonks heads with Lup.

“Ow, _fuck_ ,” Lucretia says, while Lup is churning up a lot of sand in an attempt to get to her feet and take off after Magnus. In an instant, the moment is over, and Lucretia is sitting up with a throbbing forehead, pulling her shirt down to cover the spot where Lup had been touching her.

She hears Lup and Magnus shouting in the distance. After a few minutes, she gets up and gathers her things and walks back to the ship by herself, feeling very strange indeed.

 

**CYCLE 22.**

Taako keeps a weirdly close eye on Lucretia, this time around. Lup and Barry are hanging out almost exclusively this year, and Magnus is on an expedition with Merle and Davenport, and Taako is following Lucretia around like a shadow.

It’s quite the heel turn, because Lucretia usually has a hell of a time winning even a sliver of Taako’s attention. Even with Taako hanging out with her all the time, he doesn’t really say much to her, instead choosing to exist near her. Lucretia sort of feels like he’s watching her, for some reason.

She sort of snaps, month four, when Taako asks if he can do her makeup. Lucretia _knows_ that she and Taako aren’t touchy-feely friends, and Taako doesn’t just _do_ other people’s makeup, and Taako had declined an invite to hang out with Magnus today.

“Did you just find out about me killing myself, or something?” Lucretia asks. Which, admittedly, not the most subtle way of bringing the subject up, but, she’s had it.

Taako looks torn between surprised and annoyed. “What? What the fuck?”

“You seem _obsessed_ with keeping me in sight. Is something wrong?”

Taako scrunches his nose at her. “Okay, first of all, I thought we were spending genuine bonding time together, so fuck you. Second of all, Lup’s being weird and I thought you would sympathize with that.”

Lucretia says, “Oh.”

Though Taako looks a little put-off, he doesn’t rescind the original invitation. He hovers awkwardly until Lucretia says, “I’m not really a makeup person at all.”

“Not _yet_!” Taako says, and drags her down the hall. While Lucretia doubts he’s going to change her mind on the topic, he clearly needs some company, so she doesn’t resist.

He’s halfway through some overly elaborate eyeshadow on her right eye when he nonchalantly says, “So, you said you’ve dabbled in suicide?”

“Wow,” Lucretia says.

Taako snorts. “Yeah, I heard it after I said it. Anyway, same here. Cycles four, ten, and thirteen.”

“Four and nine.”

“I’m winning, then.”

Lucretia snorts and opens her eyes to look at him, and Taako pulls the brush back from her face so that nothing smudges where it shouldn’t. He seems pretty lighthearted about it--it was almost ten years ago, she supposes, but she doesn’t want to push too hard. “Not by golf rules.”

Taako rolls his eyes, and taps his brush against his wrist. “By golf rules, everyone else on this dumb boat is beating us.”

“I didn’t think of that.” Lucretia closes her eyes again, and Taako returns to whatever he’s smearing on her face.

A few minutes pass in relative quiet, and then Lucretia says, “How about we don’t do it again?”

“Deal,” Taako says, though his voice is a little more brittle than before, and the two of them pinky-promise on that. “It didn’t do much to help, anyway.”

He finishes her face of makeup, and out of respect for the vulnerable information he’s shared, Lucretia doesn’t immediately wipe it off (she supposes the baggage of dumbass societal expectations for women doesn’t exist in this plane, anyway). The two of them walk to dinner together, where they bump into Lup and Barry in the hallway.

“Oh, Lucy--you look _gorgeous_ , did Taako do that?” Lup slips away from where she’d been linking arms with Barry, and swoops towards Lucretia, gently taking Lucretia’s face in her hands to examine the eyeshadow art more closely. “Look at you.”

Lup is _very_ close to Lucretia’s face, and Lucretia forgets what words are, for a moment. She has no idea what’s going on with her--and she has no idea what to say in response to that.

“Yeah, it took _for-fucking-ever_ and now I’m hungry,” Taako says, a little louder than necessary, and takes Lucretia by the wrist, dragging her out of that particular situation. Lup’s hands fall from Lucretia’s face, and Lucretia is pulled into the kitchen, feeling lightheaded, almost airy.

“You good?” Taako asks, when they’re in the kitchen, momentarily out of earshot of Lup and Barry.

Lucretia blinks at him, trying not to think about the ghost of the feeling of Lup’s hands on her cheeks. “Uh, yeah. Excellent. What’s for lunch?”

Taako gives her one last (concerned??) look, and then turns to the fridge to whip something together. She knows he won’t answer any questions regarding his strange behavior, and Lucretia wouldn’t even know where to start, so she just sits on the counter and keeps him company while Lup and Barry set the dinner table.

 

**CYCLE 23.**

Taako continues to constantly drag her into hanging out with him this year.

When Lucretia speculates about this to Magnus for the eightieth time, Magnus gently puts his hands on her shoulders and says, “Luke, I think that’s just what it’s like to be friends with somebody.”

Lucretia blinks at him, completely taken aback. “Oh. Well, uh. Admittedly, that would make more sense than--”

“--Than your theory that he’s monitoring you to see if his mind control device is working--?”

“--Yes, _thank you,_ Magnus.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the lesbian behavior jumped out


	6. 24-28

**CYCLE 24.**

Lucretia decides to live on the edge, and knocks on Barry’s door uninvited the second month of the cycle. She’s taking another stab at being a friend to Barry, in a normal way that’s not in a pseudo-psychiatric interview or other scientific process--she’s very determined to get him to write a section in her journals about the heat regulation on this planet (surely he’ll understand that she’s trusting him enough to take over part of her job for a few pages. Like, maybe he’ll stop being awkward around her). 

It’s late enough in the morning that he  _ should  _ be awake, but he answers the door with bleary eyes and flushed cheeks.

“Oh, goo’ morning,” Barry says, rubbing his face with both of his hands in an attempt to wake himself up. “Did you want something?”

“Goo morning,” Lucretia says back to him, and he doesn’t even crack a smile. She squints at him, ignoring his earlier question. “Are you...feeling alright?” The planet they’re on right now is a disgusting, bubbling swamp planet (which Lup and Magnus are having the time of their  _ lives  _ on, but the other members of the crew find it, well, challenging, to say the least). The terrain is wacky, and the mosquitos are plentiful--there are many avenues for disease to take hold. 

“Yeah, I’m feelin’... _ fresh _ , man. What do you need?”

Lucretia’s  _ more  _ concerned now. “I’m going to get you some, uh, soup? Or orange juice?”

Barry sniffles. “Yeah.”

She pushes him back into his room, closes the door, and then power-walks to a sink to wash her hands with hot water and soap for many, many minutes. Thankfully, she runs into Merle on the way to the kitchen, and she says, “Please go fix Barry.”

Merle yawns at her. There are deep bags under his eyes. “What?”

“Barry Bluejeans,” Lucretia says, slowly. She points down the hallway. “He’s sick, go fix him.”

“Is he dying?” Merle asks, like it isn’t his  _ whole fucking job  _ to cure people.

Lucretia considers lying to him, but she shakes her head. 

“Spell slots,” Merle says with a nonchalant shrug, and continues on his merry way, shuffling down the hall away from her. Asshole.

She goes to the kitchen and manages to make a cup of tea for Barry, and then goes back to his room, her journal tucked under her arm (though she’s not letting Barry’s germy hands  _ anywhere near  _ the journal, she’s decided). He doesn’t answer the door, so she nudges it open with her foot and stands there awkwardly in the doorway.

Barry blinks at her from where he’s lying in bed, clearly overwhelmed by the hallway light. “Lucretia?”

“Yeah, it’s me again. Here’s some tea.” 

Barry sits up, eyes still slits against the light, and Lucretia puts the tea in his hands (his fingers brush hers; she’s going to have to wash her hands again). “Aw, best friend ever,” he says.

Lucretia knows he’s not lucid, and it’s just a cup of tea, but her heart lifts a little bit. “Sure,” she manages. “Sleep well.”

She flees the room so that she doesn’t catch his cold, and smiles her way back to her room.

  
  


**CYCLE 25.**

“Can we hang out?” Taako asks, at the same time he throws himself onto the couch next to Lucretia. She bounces and leaves twin marks on both of her journals, and hums at Taako in annoyance. He blinks at her, unperturbed.

“Gave up on Lup?” Lucretia erases the marks and begins rewriting the pages in a neater script. 

“She’s being super weird,” Taako complains. He’s referring to the fact that Lup has taken advantage of being on another planet with a Fantasy Hot Topic and chose this year to have her bizarre teenage phase. Day sixteen, she put chunky highlights in her hair and has been listening to loud music in her room ever since. It’s been a long three months.

“She wanted me to dye my hair jet black with her,” Taako says.

“That doesn’t sound like it’s your style,” Lucretia says, only half-listening.

“Yeah, and she  _ knows  _ the darkest I will go is bistre, we literally negotiated that at age ninety. Blood contract. Bistre, no darker.”

“What in the whole shit is--”

“My natural hair color,  _ bistre _ ,” Taako snaps. “Keep up, darling.”

She’s never seen his hair anything darker than the golden shade it is right now, so she just takes a moment to squint at him and nod, trying to imagine it. Likely, it looks a lot like Lup’s normal hair, but it’s getting hard to look past the highlights and remember what life used to be. “Okay. Well, stay strong, Taako. If it’s any consolation, jet black is a color that I manage to work with.”

“Okay,” Taako says. He rolls his eyes. “Not all of us can be  _ you _ .”

“You would be so lucky,” Lucretia says, and goes back to her journals. “I can research hair dye reversing spells in case she plans a sneak attack.”

“I feel like you’re the only one who understands me,” Taako says, with the longsuffering air of someone whose twin has completely gone off the deep end.

Lup enters the living room a moment later, with Davenport and Merle in tow. Judging by the expressions on the old men’s faces, they’re following Lup because she’s a spectacle, not because she’s going to say anything important.

“Taako, I’ve given you time to think about it.” Lup crosses her arms. She’s wearing a studded bracelet, and Lucretia turns and puts her face in Taako’s shoulder, trying to muffle her surprised laughter. 

“Can you both just support me for  _ once  _ in this!” Lup says. 

Lucretia can’t stop laughing at her, and Taako weakly pats the back of her head as he suppresses his own laughter. “Lulu, I--listen, I can’t fucking follow you down this road.”

“I think it’ll look great!” Lup says, and kicks Lucretia when she keeps snickering. 

Lucretia clears her throat and pulls herself together, sitting back up. “Lup, it’s certainly a bold statement. Lizzie McGuire would be so very proud--”

“Lizzie McGuire-looking motherfucker,” Taako shrieks, clutching at his chest, and descends into giggles next to her. By the door, there’s an aborted noise like Davenport is fighting to stay composed, and Merle wheezes.

Lup, for her part, looks betrayed. Lucretia almost feels bad as Lup says, “I can’t  _ believe  _ all of you,” and storms out of the room. She bumps into Barry, who’d probably heard Taako’s outrageous laughter and decided to approach, but Lup doesn’t even falter before continuing off down the hall.

Barry looks to all of them, bemused. “Did we finally confront her about her extraneous Hot Topic spending?”

“I believe Lucretia told her she looked like Lizzie McGuire,” Davenport says.

Lucretia smiles, not ashamed of herself. “Someone had to.”

Taako mops at his eyes with his sleeve (thankfully, he’d chosen today to remain barefaced--Taako gets cranky when his eyeliner gets smudged). “Well, go after her, Casanova,” Taako says, and gestures at Barry, and Barry flushes bright red and only hesitates a moment before he runs after Lup. 

“‘Casanova’?” Lucretia asks Taako, prodding for more information on that front. There’s a weird sinking feeling in her stomach.

“We’ll tell you when you’re older,” Taako says, and pats her on the head. This only serves to make Lucretia more anxious.

 

 

**CYCLE 26.**

“Good morning, Lup,” Merle says sweetly, the second day of the cycle. “Come to your senses about that last cycle?”

“It was a performance art piece,” Lup snaps, not pausing once on her loop from doorway-refrigerator-pantry-doorway. “About materialism and vanity.”

She’s almost out the door, but Davenport calls, “You really committed to that bit, huh?”

Lucretia snorts into her sip of coffee, splashing it up around her face, and Lup stops and whirls around to glare at the three of them. “I suffer for my art, Cap’nport.”

“Believe me, we all did, too,” Lucretia says, and Merle chokes on his scrambled eggs. Lup spins back to face the exit and stalks out of the room without another word.   
  


 

**CYCLE 27.**

Lucretia gets nominated to go on the big exploration mission, this year--the thick rainforest on this planet means that the Starblaster can’t find the Light of Creation from the air. There are lots of plants and wildlife for her to sketch, Magnus promises, and plenty of time for the two of them to spend best friend time together.

(Lucretia doesn’t dwell on the fact that Magnus calling her his best friend makes her want to cry, because, well. That’s just sort of pathetic, after almost thirty years of being on the same ship as him.)

 

**CYCLE 28.**

Her and Magnus’s trip of the previous cycle had led to the Light of Creation, so they’re nominated to go on another trip this cycle (“Keep that karma rolling, baby!” Taako had pointed out so eloquently). While they’ll eventually get around to using rotating groups of people to explore parts of the forest, Magnus and Lucretia are sent out first on the expectation that they’ll keep up their streak.

This time, the world is significantly darker and full of bigger, scarier animals, and trees three times the size as before, so the trip doesn’t have as much of a fun, s’mores-and-campfire-songs vibe as last year, but they head out on their own anyway. After Lup’s triangulated the Light to as small a radius as she can get, Lucretia and Magnus strike out on their own.

As they’re building their campfire on the third night (Magnus’s hour spent trying to find some dry wood and Lucretia’s Level Three evocation skills get them to a somewhat decent setup), Magnus asks, “Does this place give you the creeps?”

“Nah.” Lucretia puts her can of beans down. She’s very tired of eating beans, and she’s going to insist that they catch some food for dinner tomorrow night. “Does it give  _ you  _ the creeps?”

“No,” Magnus says. “I mean, it’s just trees.”

Contrary to his words, he looks a bit on-his-guard.

Lucretia, nonchalant, says, “Yes, good thing we haven’t seen any large, carnivorous beasts around.”

“Shut up,” Magnus tells her, and points a threatening fork full of beans. Some of them roll off the utensil and Magnus annoyedly kicks them towards the fire. “You’ll jinx it.”

 

Lucretia doesn’t appear to have jinxed it until their sixth day, when they catch sight of a bright white light through the trees and jog towards it, abandoning usual precautions. As the light is only getting brighter as they approach, they figure it  _ has  _ to be the Light--and sure enough, they finally spot it across a clearing. The clearing is backed up against a rock face, with tiny caves dotting it, the side of what looks like a mountain.

At the same time as they spot the Light, however, they hear the footsteps of a massive animal, and Magnus grabs Lucretia and dives for cover in some underbrush, shushing her when she gripes at him. Magnus is holding his breath, trying to peek around and see the animal without making much sound, and Lucretia rolls into a more comfortable position and squints out towards where the Light is situated.

“It’s a bugbear,” Magnus hisses. “Looks, like, three stories tall.”

Lucretia finally turns to look at the creature in question and says, “Yikes.”

_ Yikes _ is all there is to say. The bugbear towers over them, lumbering its way through the forest towards the Light. Lucretia wracks her brain for a spell that could help them, but she’s already burned all her slots on previous shenanigans that day.

If she could get to the Light, she could use it to cast another spell (that’s something she should have shared with her friends before--she’s found that the Light can power pretty much anything. Including Lucretia).

“You can’t kill it?” she asks.   
As much as it must pain him to admit, Magnus makes a very noncommittal noise before shaking his head. “It’s real big, Creesh.”

She squints at the clearing, trying to judge the time it would take to cross it. Maybe she’s a bit biased (she needs to prove that sending her out on missions isn’t a waste of time anymore), but she sees her plan map itself out. “I’ve gotta run for it, then,” Lucretia says.

“Lucy, no--what the fuck! No, let’s--” Magnus says, and lunges to hold her back, but she’s already moving.

The bugbear sees and hears her immediately, and she hears it snarl and start bounding towards her. Lucretia’s aware that she may have just fucked up in a major way, but she’s already committed to this, so she just sprints faster.

The clearing is longer than she estimated. The bugbear is gaining on her. 

Desperate, she throws out a glimmering cantrip to cover Magnus, and keeps running across the clearing. She thinks she hears one of the bolts of magic make contact with the bugbear, but she can’t stop to look. 

“Lucretia!” Magnus screams. Lucretia  _ prays  _ that it isn’t his last word--that his dumb ass calling out to her doesn’t give up his cover and get him killed. Lucretia hasn’t accidentally killed Magnus since Cycle Six.

She can’t stop. Her feet are moving too fast for her, but she’s so  _ close _ . Lucretia stumbles, and then awkwardly throws herself at the Light of Creation, bracing for an impact that’s going to be unavoidably nasty.

“ _ LUCRETIA!”  _ That’s Magnus. He’s not dead.   
Lucretia hits the Light and holds on for dear life, and pushes her hand up above her to channel a desperate spell by pulling energy from the Light. 

It’s a cantrip, because the Light of Creation has no verbal way to tell Lucretia to go fuck herself. Magic Missile hits the bugbear in the face, and Lucretia scrambles to her feet, ignoring what will become deep bruising up her hip and side and elbow. She runs for the rock face, lunges towards one of the tiny caves big enough for her to slip inside.

The bugbear swipes at her back, and she feels claws rake into her skin, but then she’s rolling on the ground to slide under an outcropping that’s too low-down for the beast to get to her, and the bugbear roars in frustration.

Lucretia presses her hand into the Light, siphons some energy into herself, and then leans out of her hiding spot just long enough to send a flare up for the Starblaster to see. She shoves herself back under the shelf of rock protecting her before she can get caught by the bugbear, and squeezes her eyes shut against the searing pain in her back.

All she can do now is wait. Either she dies here, or the Starblaster comes and saves her and Magnus, or Magnus does something stupid and dies for no reason so Lucretia can run for it (she won’t be able to run for it).

Her nose scrapes the rock above her, but she can’t find it in herself to feel claustrophobic. Maybe this whole thing had been pretty stupid of her, but that had to mean she was a badass now, right?

 

Magnus, showing remarkable growth, doesn’t do something that gets him killed for no reason. The Starblaster shows up, and Lup and Taako have a great time chasing off the bugbear with some sick magic, but Lucretia only finds out the details of this fight later. 

As soon as she sees the Starblaster approaching--in a brief glance from out from underneath the outcropping protecting her--she passes out cold. The warm, sticky feeling of blood pooling on the stone underneath her had had her woozy for a while, and seeing the ship meant that she could succumb in good conscience.

She wakes onboard the ship again, on her stomach with all of her friends gathered around her. Merle has a hand between her shoulder blades, from where he’s probably just cast a  _ lot  _ of healing spells, and he says a very relieved, “Thank  _ Pan _ ,” when he realizes she’s awake.

“I crushed it,” Lucretia croaks, but nobody laughs. She can’t see most of them, but she can hear uncomfortable rustling. If it wouldn’t be so painful to flip onto her back and orchestrate a  _ please clap _ moment, she would do it.

Magnus, actually, is glaring at her--she can see part of his angry expression, out of the very corner of her vision. “Lucretia, you didn’t  _ have  _ to do that.”

Lucretia takes a deep breath, counts to three, and then pushes herself to all fours. Her back erupts in pain, but she gets herself to a seated position with some help from Merle. Once she’s steady, she stares Magnus down and says, “Correct.”

“So--what? You just did it for fun?” Davenport demands. Lucretia remembers somewhere that he’s her boss. She doesn’t think he can fire her, literally. 

“Yes, I thought--I thought getting mauled by a big boy bugbear would be fun, so I gave it a little try,” Lucretia says. She’s about to say more, but she hears a sniffle and Merle says, “Taako, are you  _ crying _ ?” and everyone’s heads snap to look at Taako, Lucretia included.

Taako is angrily swiping tears from his face, and when Merle calls attention to it, Taako glowers and tilts his face up, trying to keep the tears from falling and smudging his eyeliner further. “Stop,” he mumbles, his throat choked up, and swats at Merle. 

“Taako,” Lucretia says gently, all fight gone from her, “You know I was kidding. I pinky promised.”

“I  _ know _ , I was just--” Taako, embarrassed, tilts his face back down to her. Fat drops fall from his eyes in unison, streaking his face. “I didn’t want you matching my score.”

Nobody else has any idea what they’re talking about, but it’s such a sweet sentiment that Lucretia doesn’t know how she didn’t realize she and Taako had been friends for years.

Lucretia nods, and holds out a fist for Taako to bump. Taako obliges.

“I won’t do it again,” she promises him specifically. She feels Taako, along with several others around the room, relax.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yikes! sorry this update took me eight years. gotta get that degree you know. anyway lucretia's my wife i love all of you


	7. 29-34

**CYCLE 29.**

Needless to say, despite her promises, Lucretia isn’t chosen to go back on scouting missions this cycle. She makes a few passive-aggressive comments about how she and Magnus had gotten the Light two years running, but then gave up and devoted some time to catching up on her journals.

 

**CYCLE 30.**

Lucretia would like to think that she’s a bit of a jock by the end of this cycle, really. Come month eleven, she’s able to pick Merle up off the ground and carry him quite easily, a fact that he comes to dislike quite a bit.

Lup keeps commenting on how ripped Lucretia is getting, and sometimes she squeezes Lucretia’s bicep appreciatively and Lucretia forgets how to talk. This effect that Lup has on her only seems to be getting worse, but Lucretia thinks it’s because Lucretia just values their friendship more and more? Whatever.

It’s sort of a shame that it won’t matter at the beginning of the next cycle, but Lucretia feels _good_ that year. Even though there’s a weird janitor lurking around, interchangeably making ominous statements about the future and describing the plots to TV shows that Lucretia doesn’t think exist on this plane.

 

**CYCLE 31.**

Cycle 31 is a blur of trying to figure out a way to see five feet through a thick blizzard that obscures the entire planet, like they’re inside a shitty snowglobe that never stops swirling. Lucretia doesn’t have anything interesting to write about, because all people do is get on each other’s nerves, with nothing outside the ship to occupy themselves with.

Taako and Magnus get into a nasty fight, and then Lup and Davenport get into it, and everyone is just kind of grumpy. Lucretia spends a lot of time in her room and avoids the tension that’s only growing as the months go on. She refuses to moderate fights, and she basically only talks to Merle, and she just puts her head down and tries to get through the year. That’s family sometimes, she supposes.

 

**CYCLE 32.**

This cycle is only notable because Taako and Magnus dedicate approximately a hundred and twenty-four hours to perfecting their secret handshake (which, consequently, isn’t such a secret anymore, but is a minute and a half long, meaning everyone wants to murder them). Lucretia’s torn between being glad that the two of them are talking again, and wishing they would never lay eyes on each other again because she’ll literally _die_ if she has to hear the words “Shimmy shimmy ko-ko pop, listen to me now” again.

 

**CYCLE 33.**

It’s this cycle that Lucretia discovers she _really_ likes wine.

They rescue a town from a goblin invasion, and apparently it was just the right town with a huge wine market because they get a big thank-you basket (along with the Light of Creation, which, yeah, arguably just as important). The seven of them crack into a few of the bottles at dinnertime, and Lucretia finds herself holding a big glass of a dark red.

“You’re supposed to drink it,” Merle tells her.

“Oh, _really,_ Nancy Drew.” Lucretia eyes her glass warily. “I get _that_. I’ve just never had wine before.”

“What the hell?” Magnus asks her, as if she’d just gently stabbed him with a fork. “More of a beer person?”

Lucretia’s face feels warm, and not just because of the wine fumes in the room. “No, I’m not much of a drinking person, I guess.”

“HOW are we still finding things out about you like this after thirty years?” Lup demands.

“It never came up!” Lucretia defends herself. It speaks for itself that she doesn’t make a snide comment about how none of them gave a shit about her for a decade. She eyes the wine again. It looks rather tempting, and judging by the flush already present on her friends’ faces, it’ll help her unwind a little. “I guess I never got into the habit before we left home.”

Davenport is narrowing his eyes at her--she can feel his gaze on the side of her face, and she looks over at him. “Wait, Lucretia, remind me how old you were when we left?”

“Eighteen,” she says.

She might as well have said that she was _three_ , for the reaction it gets.

“Damn--I forgot you’re a fucking _infant_ ,” Taako says, overlapping with Lup’s exclaimed, “Lucy, you’re just a baby, holy shit!”

Merle has his hands clapped to his face, and is cooing at her. He, like the twins, has more than a hundred years on her.  “Lucretia...my dearest, most precious child...”

“Maybe you _shouldn’t_ be drinking,” Barry says, like a traitor. She’s reminded that he’s older than her own father.

“Yes, I think you’re still technically under the legal drinking age,” Davenport piles on, like he thinks he’s funny.

“Magnus is like, a year older than me.”

“Two,” Magnus corrects, smiling smugly and holding up two fingers.

“That’s still--”

“Don’t fight, children,” Davenport says, and Barry is laughing much harder than the situation calls for.

Lucretia scowls at all of them, and downs the glass of wine in one go, to delighted cheers from Magnus’s end of the table. She _clunks_ the glass back down as warmth spreads through her blood, and she says, “Hot diggity shit,” despite the fact that it’s not _nearly_ as tasty as promised.

  


**CYCLE 34.**

It’s a sort of rainy, depressing planet this year. There are lots of trees and plants and scenery, but the weather means that nobody can ever enjoy that too much. It’s like a shitty Fantasy Seattle. Frasier isn’t even here.

Needless to say, everyone’s running a little lower on Vitamin D than usual. Lucretia hadn’t realized how bad it had gotten until one night, at like two in the morning, there’s a tiny knock on her door.

Lucretia pulls herself upright, re-ties her robe and tries to get herself presentable. She’d been half-asleep over her desk, trying to finish some old pages of her journals, but she needs to go unlock the door to find out who else is awake at this hour.

It’s Taako. He’s barefaced, with mussed hair and deep circles under his eyes, and he’s shivering. He says, before she can say anything, “I’m fine. Can I come in?”

She’s taken aback, and doesn’t know what to say. He pushes past her and goes to sit on her bed, sitting on his hands and looking up at her with a sort of wild, unfocused gaze. “I was going to do...something, so I’m here. Did I wake you up?”

Lucretia’s heart skips a beat. She tries not to show her panic on her face as she says, “No, I was up. Did you take anything?”

He shakes his head, but he’s so jittery that she still tries to think of a way to sneakily get Merle without Taako noticing she’s gone. He’s never come to _her_ in crisis like this, though she supposes that he didn’t want to interrupt whatever science Lup and Barry are getting up to.

“I know it’s really stupid of me to barge in like this but I didn’t want to break my promise because that’s literally the least I can do, you know?” Taako frees one hand to tug sharply on one of his ears, and judging by the look on his face, it hurts. “Anyway, you could tell me to fuck off if you want to sleep, I don’t want to bother you.”

So, that basically means Lucretia’s going to monitor Taako for the next forty-eight hours. “No, you can stay here. I don’t mind,” she insists, at Taako’s vaguely disbelieving glance. She looks around her room, trying to Taako-proof it. She doesn’t have any sharp objects or alcohol or anything in immediate view, so she goes back to appearing calm and impassive. “Anything in particular you want to talk about?”

Taako shifts around, uncomfortable. “Nah.” He’s lying. That’s fine; Lucretia is still trying to wake up and she probably couldn’t process any deep-seated emotional problems right now.

“Okay, so let’s just chill out for a second,” she says. “Uh. Could I paint your nails?”

For a few moments, he doesn’t respond, but then Taako sniffs, a suspiciously damp sound. “Yes. Do you have dark pink?”

“I got a really sexy magenta last cycle,” Lucretia says. She goes to her desk and rifles around in some of the drawers in search of it. “I don’t mean sexy in a seductive way. It’s a nice color, I guess.”

Taako says, tone completely flat, “I can’t wait to see it.”

Lucretia finds it a few minutes later. It had rolled to the back of a drawer, hidden underneath a scrunched-up mess of loose paper in her least favorite drawer. She shakes the bottle, and crosses to Taako, and sits carefully down on the bed so that she doesn’t jostle her friend too much. She has no idea what will set him off, she’s never talked him down before.

In the midst of her looking around her room for the polish, he’s pulled one of Lucretia’s blankets around his shoulders, and it looks like he’s attempting to be absorbed by it.

“Hand,” she commands, and Taako sticks out his left hand. There are deep, painful-looking crescent-shaped marks in it, like he’s been digging his claw-like fingernails into the skin hard enough to hurt.

Lucretia doesn’t comment on this. She just unscrews the bottle of nail polish and gets to work.

Slowly, Taako starts to slow down. The tension he’d been holding releases, and he relaxes his posture, and he even laughs at something Lucretia says. He takes his turn painting Lucretia’s nails, and by that point, it’s almost time for Lucretia to wake up.

Taako glances out the window, seeing that it’s getting light out, and grimaces. “Oh, shit. Sorry, I literally kept you up all night.”

Lucretia shrugs. She’s feeling a bit of a headache from not sleeping, but it’s far preferable to the alternative. “You ready to sleep for a couple hours now?”

Taako shrugs back at her. “Answer me this one question: do you kick?”

“I have no way of knowing that,” Lucretia says.

“Holy macaroni, we need to get you a girlfriend,” Taako tells her flatly, but he makes himself cozy on her bed anyway and burrows into Lucretia’s side when she lays down next to him. He’s asleep within minutes, and he keeps headbutting Lucretia’s shoulder in his sleep, and she lays there quietly with her thoughts for a long time.

Taako, as it turns out, kicks in his sleep. Lucretia thinks it’s more amusing than anything, because he’s lying at a weird angle that means his kicks largely miss her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been a while! i have a LOT of later cycles already written, but i just gotta fill in the ones i'm missing. luckily it's summertime now so i'll have more time to drink my juice that makes me love lucretia.
> 
> imstuckathome12 did some GORGEOUS art of the last scene that you all should look at if you love beautiful art!! it's here: https://imstuckathome12.tumblr.com/post/185706952315/id-a-full-body-digital-drawing-of-taako-and
> 
> sorry ao3 wont let me make the link look pretty... but we must suffer for beautiful art


	8. 35

**CYCLE 35.**

This cycle finds them on their first entirely-underwater plane. It’s just a big ocean planet with no islands in sight, and their ship functions as a literal seafaring vessel for months at a time. 

Davenport’s deeply into it. He could’ve been a pirate, in another life. He helps Lucretia map currents and tries to make sense of the tides (which are kind of hard to see, but they exist, somewhere). He’s also the only one who isn’t seasick for the first few weeks, which makes him a superhero to the rest of the crew, basically.

In some areas, the water is shallower, a light green or even completely translucent, with colorful fish and plants in plain sight, but whenever they venture into deeper, dark water, Lucretia swears she’s caught sight of something enormous just below the surface, rolling over in the water with shimmery scales.

Lucretia’s not foolhardy enough to jump in the water and go swimming with these unknown creatures slithering around down there (she ventures out in the shallow water to splash around with some of the other crewmates, but that’s about it). However, Magnus and Taako have a habit of hyping each other up into doing stupid stunts, and they’re left alone together just a  _ little  _ too long one morning. 

After lunch on that particular day, Magnus announces, “Magnus is going in.”

Lup raises her eyebrows, along with everyone else around the table. “Really?”

“I got this spell called Polymorph,” Taako explains, while Magnus just looks excited. Taako bares his teeth in a smile that tells his sister not to fight him on this one. “Did you guys ever see Shark Tales? Fucked up that there were hardly any sharks in that movie, huh.”

“I don’t think you’ve seen Shark Tales,” Lucretia says, confused.

Taako continues on, steamrolling her objection so that he can finish his pitch. “Well, I’m about to fix that lack of sharks with my new reboot of Shark Tales, called ‘Polymorph: Taako Does It Again.’”

“They made a second Shark Tales already,” Barry says.

“No they didn’t,” Lup says, sighing. “It was in development but then the Hunger ate our planet.”

They sit there for a moment, a customary beat of silence to honor the millions of people that died, and then Taako picks the conversation back up. “So that means the copyright contract expired and I can pick up the franchise! Also Magnus will find the Light of Creation or whatever.”

Merle says, “I’d be careful. There’s something big down there.”

“You’re doing great, adding a bit of mystery,” Taako compliments absentmindedly. “I’ll remember that once we’re workshopping the script.”

“We’ll discuss your contract later,” Magnus says to Merle.

“I don’t know if the investors are sold on this one, Koko.” Lup looks anxious--she must have seen  _ something  _ in the water, like Lucretia and Merle have. “Maybe try something a little smaller than a shark?”

“What, like a goldfish or something?” Taako scoffs. “As if audiences want to see that.”

Lucretia has to agree that it would look much cooler in her journals if Taako went the shark route. 

“Hell yes,” Magnus concurs.

“It’s decided,” Taako says. 

Magnus gets up and goes to the upper deck, and everyone just trails after him. He stands on the railing and jumps off and, midway through the air, Taako blasts him with a spell that turns him into an Orca whale and Magnus bellyflops into the water, disappearing into the dark blue water. 

“Fucking dumbass,” Lup says, staring at the spot where the disturbance in the water is already fading in the gentle waves. She’s tense, and tapping her fingers incessantly on the wood of the mast next to her. “That’s not even a type of shark.”

“I panicked,” Taako whines. 

All of them look back at the water and keep their eyes trained there as well, searching for any sign of a black-and-white shape swimming around down there.

 

It’s almost ten minutes before Magnus resurfaces, but he doesn’t disappoint. Orca-Magnus bursts out from the water, leaping directly onto the Starblaster deck and hitting the wood planks with his full whale force before transforming back and spitting seawater out of his mouth. Something’s wrong. He’s not sauntering around and congratulating himself on a job well done.

His wild eyes find Davenport, and he says, “We need to get the fuck out of here.”

Davenport doesn’t question him, and books it for the bridge.

Lup is already helping Magnus up, and Merle is wringing water out of Magnus’s hair and watching it splatter on the deck. “What happened?” Barry asks.

Magnus is spooked. He holds onto Merle’s arm and says, “We’re going to die,” with no hint of irony in sight. 

The water from which Magnus had emerged  _ erupts _ , and something unfathomably big surfaces there. The width of it spans almost the entire length of the Starblaster, and it’s moving so quickly upward that Lucretia can’t make out any beginning or end to its size.

The creature--Lucretia doesn’t even realize it’s a creature, at first--brings a massive head down and turns it sideways to allow for one eye to directly regard them all on the dock. It’s showering gallons and gallons of water onto the deck as it swishes its head from side to side, and all of the crew stands utterly still around Lucretia.

The sea monster is a dark purplish-blue, with scales that shimmer in the sunlight in a nonstop way that’s almost overwhelming. There are massive, fanned-out gills on either side of the head, and the big, completely black eye is taller than an entire Magnus.

The eye stops in front of Lucretia and Lup and Taako, unblinking, a mere foot away from where they could reach out and touch. Lucretia stares, and it stares back, and Lucretia has a flicker of hope like maybe it’s a  _ friendly  _ sea monster.

The creature snarls, showing thousands upon thousands of needle-like teeth, and opens its jaws wide, and Barry screams, “ _ Get inside _ !” 

Davenport, somewhere in the ship, slams on the gas, and the Starblaster leaps away, climbing at the sharpest angle it can handle, and everyone on the deck is knocked off their feet with the inertia. The monster’s jaws close on empty air with a massive scraping of teeth.

“I think--” Barry tries to get to his feet, using the railing as support. “I think I saw the Light in there.”

“In the--!” Taako shrieks. “No fucking way! We’re leaving it there!”

Magnus has a look on his face like perhaps he could just jump into the monster’s mouth and try and get the Light for himself, but Lup has already leaped across the deck and latched onto Magnus for balance and is yanking both of them belowdecks.

“Don’t even think about it, Burnsides,” Merle is saying, close on Lup’s heels, and Taako looks to Lucretia in a similar way and grabs onto Lucretia’s arm to start yanking her after them.

Lucretia drags Taako over and grabs onto Barry, and the three of them run for the stairs in a kindergarten-baby-chain-esque pattern, but the three of them also stop for a moment to see where the creature’s at. 

The sea monster is following them. The Starblaster is gaining altitude and speed, but there’s a dark, wiggly shape rocketing through the water behind them, matching their speed.

“We can’t kill it, it’s  _ massive _ ,” Barry says.

“Not to mention sexy,” Taako says. He’s losing his mind, a little bit, and laughs a shrill laugh. 

“No, yeah,” Lucretia says. The size of the creature is making her dizzy. “It’s  _ gonna  _ be my wife.”

The sea monster, as if hearing Lucretia’s romantic intentions, catapults itself out of the water and there’s a sickening  _ crack  _ as its jaws close barely a foot away from the stern.

Taako bolts, leaping down the stairs and screaming, “ _ Cap’nport you need to fucking floor it!”  _ but Lucretia and Barry hold their ground, frozen in place.

“Would evocation magic even do anything here?” Barry asks.

“Water is resistant to fire damage,” Lucretia says. 

Barry nods solemnly. “Learned that--”

“--from Charmander,” both of them say, in eerie unison, and they’re halfway to freaking out about that when the boat leaps forward again and they lose their balance.

Lup is back at Lucretia’s side all of a sudden, helping both her and Barry up and helping them get belowdecks, where the three of them tumble to the floor of the hallway in an undignified heap. They’re safe for now, and the sudden lack of wind whipping around their faces makes it easier to breathe and think.

There’s a lull in the action as they all crane their necks to listen for signs of pursuit. 

Lup eventually offers, “As little as I want Magnus to be right, one of us might have to get vored to get the Light of Creation.”

“Don’t,” Magnus says, in despair, from down the hallway, “make it a vore thing, or I won’t do it.”

“ _ I’ll _ fucking do it,” Lup says. “Are you a pussy?”

“Stop,” Merle snaps, uncharacteristically sharp. He’d fallen down in the second jolt, and is partially pinning Magnus down (as much as Magnus can be pinned down by someone Merle’s size). “Nobody’s getting vored.”

There’s a startled silence--perhaps a bit too respectful, considering “nobody’s getting vored” is the least impressive sentence Merle’s said, ever (and he’s said a few doozers in his time). 

The sea monster roars, but it sounds farther away, now. Around them, the ship slows to a stop.

“I’m--tired of you kids wanting to  _ die heroically  _ all the time,” Merle grumbles. “Could you just try and think outside the bun for once? This self-destructive thing you’ve all got going on is bullshit. Pan...dammit.”

“Sorry, Dad,” Taako says.

“Shut up,” Merle says. “You’re on my shitlist. I know why you died during cycle thirteen.”

“Fuck you,” Taako snarls. 

Merle glances around at all of them, with the look of someone who is at the end of an incredibly long rope. “The rest of you, too. I’m tired of it. Do you think I  _ like  _ seeing you all die? All the time?”

“It isn’t real,” Lup says, trying to calm him down. “I mean--we’ll just come back.”

“Yeah, until you  _ don’t _ ,” Merle says. 

Chastised, the five of them sit in quiet and don’t make eye contact until Davenport shuffles down the hall towards them and announces that he thinks he managed to shake the monster. 

 

They don’t get the Light that year. They do, however, find themselves in more somber discussions about whether death has any meaning at all to them, anymore.

You know, like fun talks, that families have.


End file.
